At some time or another we have all seen it – neighbourhood walls with old and deprecated graffiti or, just as common, you may have seen some flyers or posters that have been stuck for so long on these walls that they start to peel and hang on by their edges. It is this effect that is recreated in this tutorial. Rather than use typical grafitti or a common poster this tutorial opted to combine the two, and have old and peeling posterized letters graffiti slowly peeling and falling from the wall.
This Photoshop tutorial has been written by Aaron Vergisi from TutzMaze.
So, without much delay let’s get on with the tutorial…
Falling Off the Wall Text Effect Preview and Source Files
Source Files
You can download the .psd file for this tutorial here:
Step 1
Create a new Photoshop document with the dimensions of your choice.
Step 2
Bring in the brick wall texture to this document.
Step 3
Now, I wanted a big wall with lots of bricks on screen so I simply duplicated the brickwall layer, then transformed it using CTRL+T and then flipped it horizontally and aligned it up with the side of the first layer so that it looks smooth and continuous. Then I duplicated the layers again, transformed it vertically and aligned them as well. The result is an OK wall background as shown below.
Step 4
Now select all the layers with the brick wall and then right click on the layers palette and select the merge layers option.
Step 5
Select the text type tool and add some text.
Step 6
Just so that you could get some space between the letters and I then increased the horizontal text spacing.
Step 7
Give the text layer a colour of your choice. Using the rectangular marquee tool select the letter S from the text layer and press CTRL+C to copy it. Create a new layer and paste the copied letter onto it by using the short key CTRL+V. Name the new layer as S.
Step 8
Take the polygon lasso tool and create a selection on the new copied letter layer where you want it to fall from the wall.
Step 9
After making the selection hit CTRL+X and then make a new layer and paste using the short key CTRL+V. Name the new layer as S-fold.
Step 10
Select the S-fold layer and go to Image -> Adjustments -> Hue/Saturation and then change the values so that it looks something like the one shown below.
Step 11
Select the S-fold layer again and transform it using CTRL+T and manipulate it in such a way that it looks as if it has fallen off from the edge of the alphabet.
Step 12
Hold CTRL+ and click on the thumbnail of the S-fold layer to select the area of the fold only. Create a new layer named S-shadow. Now, select the S-shadow layer and take the gradient tool with the starting color as black and ending colour as transparent, create a gradient to slightly simulate the fall off of the fold. Also slightly reduce the opacity value of gradient for a smooth shadow.
Step 13
Give a shadow to the fold layers by right clicking on the fold layers and selecting blending options and then the drop shadow option from it.
Step 14
Select the layers named S, S-fold and S-shadow simultaneously from the layers palette and then right click on them and select the link layers option.
Step 15
Repeat the above said steps from 7 to 13 on all the letters. This will give you a siniliar effect like the one being shown below. Change the blend mode of each letter layer to Linear Burn.
Step 16
Color correct the background wall layer by selecting it on the layer palette and then selecting the image –> adjustments –> Hue/Saturation options from it.
Step 17
Create a new layer named clouds just above the background bricks layer.
Step 18
With black and white as foreground and background colour go to Filter-> Render -> Clouds. Now with a soft brush erase off all the clouds from the other parts of the image, leaving the clouds only near the texts. Change the blending mode to colour dodge and reduce its opacity.
Step 19
Bring in the paper texture and place it just above the clouds layer in the layer palette.
Step 20
Holding CTRL+ and Shift together, select all the fold layers by clicking on the each of the thumbnails of the fold layers.
Step 21
Invert the selection using the short key Alt+CTRL+I.
Step 22
With the paper texture layer selected, hit delete.
Step 23
Bring the paper texture layer above all other layers and change its blending mode to multiply
Step 24
Bring back the visibility of the original text layer.
Step 25
Change its blending mode to soft light and bring down its opacity to 65%.
Step 26 – Finished
And finally, save the image to the format of your choice.
The Author
Aaron Vergisi from has been the author of todays tutorial, he is a young graphic designer from Baltimore, USA.
You can follow him on Twitter or on Facebook and you can visit his website, TutMaze a new graphic design magazine.
Do you have a tutorial you would like to share?
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We are open to most ideas…look forward to hearing from you.
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