Last week I did a tutorial on how to create a WWII propaganda poster in Photoshop. This week I thought I would do a similar tutorial, but on the flip side. This weeks tutorial is fairly similar to last weeks, but rather than create a patriotic poster, we are going to create a communist style propaganda poster. This one is a little bit easier than last weeks and should be a fun little project for those who wish to try it out.
Step 1
Create a new document with the following settings: 8×10 and 72dpi.
Step 2
Find a nice wrinkled paper background to use as the surface for your poster. I used this stock photo from Shutterstock, but there are plenty of free images just like it.
The image was a bit to orange, so I adjusted the images hue and saturation to lighten it up a bit.

Step 4
Find a picture of a soldier that you want to add to your poster. Cut away any background from the picture and paste the image on top of your paper layer.
I am using this image from Shutterstock.

Step 5
Next you will need to desaturate the image. To do this, go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate

Step 6
To give this photo more of a vintage poster look, we are going to apply a Poster Edges Filter to it.


Step 7
Create a red box behind the layer your soldier is on. To help it blend with the paper better, set the layers blending options to Multiply

Step 8
Now we can start adding some text. It seems like most of the poster of this style have a line of giant text running the length of the poster. Think of something clever for your poster.
I used the Soviet font from dafont.com

Step 9
With the text layer you just created selected, change the Blending Options to Color Dodge.

Step 10
Add some more text to your poster.

Step 11
I added a 3px white stroke around the text that lays on top of the red banner to help make it stand out.

Step 12
Using the rectangle tool, I created some stripes to add a little character to the poster.

Step 13
The poster looked like it needed a touch more color, so I drew a white rectangle above and below the the red stripe.

Step 14
To give the poster that grainy shadow look that so many of these types of posters have I added a Inner Shadow to the white rectangles we just created.
Open the Layer FX box and set the Inner Shadow to the following settings:

Final Image


17 Comments
Pretty cool effect
try harder
Thanks, now I know what stroke is used for!
I like it, but the effect on the soldiers was kind of lame, perhaps a different kind of brush stroke effect. Ink Outlines looks decent, just play with the settings.
I’ve never seen in Russia posters like this one. )
holly shit, where you find this ”russian letters” ? Russian Propaganda Poster - ha it’s bullshit. type it in google and watch real posters.
Not Bad…
Где вы нашли этот шрифт? это и близко не кириллица!
Это пропаганда чего? НАТО ? такого вооружения у нас нет!
Hmm, no. Not a very succesfull tutorial.
What does the Russian letters say? Their alphabet looks interesting.
Thanks for sharing the tutorial.
An interesting tutorial and a good effect. I will have to try it out and see what results I get. Thanks for sharing.
Haha…well…to be honest it is too creative for Russian propaganda (as I can gather You meant Soviet one, right?=)
I really like the final result and the step-by-step explanation’s really nice. Thank you
Best regards from Toronto,
Mike / Toronto Web Design & SEO
How the **** do i add the russian/soviet txt into ps….??
Wee I found out, Nice Tut anyways…
dam just wut i need!!
This is you have windows…. if you have apple… then i’m sorry. Can’t help you…(try search -Installing font in ps- in google)
Go to Start menu > Setting > Control Panel > Fonts
In the Fonts window
Go to File > Install new font
Locate font on your computer (if more than one select the ones you want)
Press OK, they will install into your system and when you next open Photoshop you will see them there. Hobefully….
Hope it worked
Hello, is really good!