Graffiti is all that going on in my mind these days. I guess the lack of opportunity to do it in the physical world is making me all the more addicted to do its digital counterpart nowadays. This time around i wanted to paint a face made up of all alphabets on the wall.  And it so happens that the picture of the wall that i hunted down had a lamp post right in the middle. At first i thought of removing it by cloning. But later i was struck with this brilliant idea to let it be there and my graffiti to be behind this lamp post so that it added to the overall reality of the final composition. So here is how i went about fulfilling my graffiti designing thirst.

Final Image Preview

Step 1

Create a new composition of the desired size with white as the background color. Make sure that the size of the composition is the same as that you want for your final output.

Step 2

Import the image that you want to make the graffiti out of.

Step 3

Go to Image-> Adjustments-> Brightness/Contrast and then decrease the brightness and increase the contrast of the image

Step 4

Use the magic wand tool to select the background area of the image

Step 5

With the background selected hit Delete to completely erase the background of the imported image.

Step 6

The bottom part of the image that i use is kinda too perfect for a graffiti art. So i used the Pen tool to make a path around the portions that i wanted to delete. Then changed the path to selection by hitting Ctrl + Enter.

Step 7

Once the selection is made i deleted that portion by hitting Delete on the keyboard

Step 8

Go to Image -> Adjustments -> Desaturate

Step 9

Now save the composition as a PSD file and nothing else. I saved it as Hip hop pic.psd

Step 10

Open a new canvas and make it as the same size of the canvas that we made earlier and make the background color black.

Step 11

Now get random and type whatever you want to using the text type tool. Be generous and fill the composition with your text. Use both horizontal and vertical type tool. Duplicate the text layers and place them without any particular order.

Step 12

Right click on one of the text layers and select the Blending Options and add a shadow to the layer.

Step 13

Right click on the layer to which you added a shadow and then select the Copy Layer Style option. Select another text layer and right click on it and select the paste layer style option.

Step 14

Select all the text layers and right click on them and select the Rasterize type option. Then with all the layers still selected right click and select the merge layers option.

Step 15

Right click on the merged layer and select the Duplicate Layer option.

Step 16

Select the merged layer beneath the original merged layer and go to Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur.

Step 17

Now select the top merged layer and go to Filter -> Distort -> Displace. And select the options as shown here. In the next window select the first psd that we saved in the first place.

Step 18

Now import the original psd file on top of all other layers to the current canvas and align it with the canvas that you are working with.

Step 19

Select imported layer’s blending option to linear burn and reduce the opacity.

Step 20

Use the magic wand to select the area outside the picture of the top picture layer and with magic wand tool and with the other layers other than the background and hit delete so that all the texts except those in the picture gets deleted.

Step 21

Hide the background layer

Step 22

Open a new document of the same size as that of the canvas that we opened earlier.

Step 23

Import the face made up of the alphabets to the current canvas.

Step 24

Select the face picture and hit Ctrl +T to transform the picture and right click and select perspective option.

Step 25

Move the control vertices and arrange the picture in accordance with the perspective of the wall in the picture.

Step 26

Select the blend mode of the top picture layer to pin light.

Step 27

Go to Image -> Adjustments -> Curves and adjust the curves to increase the contrast.

Step 28

Select the face image layer and right click on it and select the Duplicate Layer option.

Step 29

Select the duplicated layer and go to Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur and give a value of 10 pixels.

Step 30

Select the 2 picture layers and right click on them and select the Link Layers option.

Step 31

Place the picture on top of the background in such a way that it overlaps with the lamp post.

Step 32

Hide the 2 face picture layers so that we can work with more ease.

Step 33

With the pen tool make a path around the lamp post.

Step 34

Convert the path to selection by hitting Ctrl + Enter and turn the face pictures layer back ON.

Step 35

Select the 2 face picture layers and hit delete. This will delete the portions that are overlapping the lamp post.

Step 36

Now your image would look like the one shown and you can save it to a file format of your choice.