Making Own Poster

lways wanted to play Al Pacino in the classic hitmovie "Scarface"? Well here's your chance to at least have your photo on the movieposter!

We will replicate the black and white poster, with this image as a rough sample (There must be better images of this poster available, but this one will do for now..)

Take a good photo of yourself and open it in photoshop.

Remove the background by using either the Polygonal or Magnetic Lasso Tool.

Once done we will convert your image to pure black and white. Now I am sure there are easier ways to do this, but I used the Cutout effect, to have more control.

Filter -> Artistic -> Cutout

Set the number of levels to 2, keeping the other 2 settings in their original position, press OK

Now your image has a vectorized look, but needs to be set to black and white. I used the magic wand tool to do this piece by piece, to avoid big black areas, with no detail whatsoever. Select the magic wand tool (press W) and set the tolerance at the top to a level around 50.

Hit D and then X to set the background colour to black. (Hit X again to set it to white again).

Start selecting areas and give them a colour to your liking. In general this goes pretty quick, especially if you untick Contiguous at the top. (This means that areas with the same colour will be selected, they dont have to be connected).

Once done you should have a black and white picture of yourself! If you're image looks to the left, go to Image -> Rotate Canvas -> Flip canvas horizontally to make it look to the right! This will look better in the end. If your image just stares at you, thats fine as well

Now, we will add the black partial background. Add a new layer and select the Polygonal lasso tool. Make a selection that covers the left part of the image, and spare some of the details of the image. so that means you will go down via the left side of the image, as you can see below:



Easy huh?! Now all thats left is the text and we're done! As you can see I have some blank space on my canvas available. If you have a shortage of space, simply increase the canvas size!

Image -> Canvas size

My best guess was Times New Roman for the font, ofcourse you may experiment with this yourself, but if you stretch it a little it comes pretty close I think.

First we'll start with the red text.

Type "AL PACINO SCARFACE". Select a font size so that it covers the width of your screen!

My settings:



Al pacino should be in the black part of the image, scarface in the right. Add some spaces when necessary.

On the left side there will appear the following text. Copy it to save yourself some typing

CODE

He was
Tony Montana.

The world
will remember
him by another
name

...SCARFACE

With the following settings:



At the total bottom of the original poster, you can also see the text:

CODE

He loved the American Dream.
With a vengeance.

Add it if you have the space available, I didnt, so I just left it out. Use a smaller font size, but set it to bold.

On the right, there will be room for the movie credits, again, copy + paste:

CODE

A MARTIN BREGMAN
PRODUCTION
A BRIAN DE PALMA
FILM
AL PACINO "SCARFACE"
SCREENPLAY BY
OLIVER STONE
MUSIC BY
GIORGIO MORODER
DIRECTION OF PHOTOGRAPHY
JOHN A. ALONZO
A.H.C.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
LOUIS A. STROLLER
PRODUCED BY
MARTIN BREGMAN
DIRECTED BY
BRIAN DE PALMA

Set it to align-right.

Use these settings:

for the names (only the name itself): font size: 27pt, vertically scale 125%
for the 'a' in front of the name: font size: 9pt, vertically scale 125%
for the 'E' in 'A BRIAN DE PALMA': font size: 22pt, vertically scale 125% (twice)
for the remaining text: font size: 9pt, vertically scale 100%

you should have an end result close to this: