Andy-Warhol-Up Your Photographs

By Melissa Evans

h2>STEP 4: The Finishing Touches

a) Adding a Signature

If you have a tablet, simply create a new layer above all the other layers and sign your name.

No tablet? Please don’t write your signature with your mouse…it will probably just turn out a mess. The best idea is to scan in your signature…

Get piece of real white paper and do your signature with a black pen. Scan the signature. Click on the layer in the Layers Window and drag and drop it onto your Warhol canvas.

Move the signature into place and scale it to the right size. Hopefully down, scaling up normally results in a less than perfect look.

Quite often with scans there will be some unwanted grey marks. What we want is nice black lines on a perfectly white background. You will probably need to Adjust the Curves…

Adjusting Curves

First make sure your image doesn’t have any colour…

Image>>Adjust>>Desaturate…

Then…

Image>>Adjust>>Curves…
Adjusting curves in Photoshop

The line in the “Curves” dialogue box will appear as a diagonal. Click on this diagonal line twice and drag these two markers until your line forms an “S” shape (as shown above). The lower marker will increase the black values as you pull it down. The upper marker will decrease the grey values as you pull it up. The exact shape of YOUR “S” curve will depend on YOUR signature image, so watch your image as you move these markers until you achieve the desired result.

Finally set the mode of the signature layer to Multiply.

Save your photoshop file. I called mine “warhol_unmerged.psd”. This way I can also change the colors and make more interesting prints in the future.

b) Adding Canvas Texture

Lots of print shops can now print your photoshop files directly on to canvas which is really cool but it is also expensive. If you can afford to do this stop here. Simply flatten your image. Save the file to disc and go to the print shop.

Layer>>Flatten Image

If not try this…

We are going to apply a canvas grain effect to our picture, so it’s going to look like a print from a canvas original…which I happen to like the look of. This step is optional, you may not like it. I think you should try though, to see what it turns out like.

Flatten your image.
Layer>>Flatten Image

Change the mode to RGB.

Filter>>Texture>>Texturizer…

The settings I used are shown in the image below but have a play round for yourself! Remember the keyword is SUBTLE!

Change the mode back to CMYK.

Save. I called this file “warhol_merged.psd”

Off to the printer you go!

So that’s it! That’s how to change you photos into Andy Warhol inspired masterpieces. I hope you found this Photoshop tutorial helpful. Feel free to contact me via my contact page if you have any questions.

Below are some amazing results that others have had following my Pop Art tutorial.

LOVE Your Work

From time to time people send me pictures of their work that they have achieved through following my tutorials. I decided to put some of the best here. Click on the thumbnails below…

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