Everyone in the business world knows the importance of posters and ads in advertising for specific products. Posters are an integral part of advertising. An eye-catching, attractive poster that conveys a professional, compelling message about a product, service or event will invariably hold the user’s attention.
In this article, we have collected a mixture of Photoshop and Illustrator tutorials related to posters and advertisements. You will find some are intermediate and some are very advanced, but they’ll all give you a lot of direction with photo composition, illustration, coloring processing, typography techniques, pen tool tricks, shapes processing and much more.
Further Reading on SmashingMag:
- 60 Concert Posters From Ten Amazing Artists
- Breathtaking Typographic Posters
- The Legacy Of Polish Poster Design
- 35 Beautiful Vintage and Retro Photoshop Tutorials
Poster Tutorials
Creating an Old-Collage Effect Poster This one’s a favorite because it helps you put images and text together really easily. In this tutorial, the artist puts together a poster that has a main photograph and a lot of text, giving it an old collage feel.
Create an Awesome Music Poster A comprehensive step-by-step tutorial that shows you a variety of techniques to create a beautiful music poster!
Create an Event Poster with C4D and Photoshop - PSD Plus Tutorial A very exciting tutorial: take a rendered scene, add props and then finalize it in Photoshop. Loads of great tips and techniques in this tutorial!
Create an Impactful Child Welfare Poster This tutorial teaches you some important techniques for creating high-impact images. Follow the steps to create your own high-impact child welfare poster.
Create a Pulsing Poster with a Vinyl Record and Grunge Type In this tutorial, the artist explains how to create a vinyl record with blends and opacity masks. He also creates some funky pulsing elements and grunge typography and combines it into a unique poster design.
Creating a Grunge Rock Poster In this tutorial, the artist shows you how to design a beautiful grunge rock poster!
How to Create an Ice-Cold Poster with 3-D Text In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to combine stock images and 3-D text in a cool poster. The artist uses an icy theme and colors it in his own style. You’ll see it’s not that hard to create a simple, appealing poster that uses text and imagery effectively.
Create a Mock-Retro Poster Concept This tutorial teaches you how to design a mock-retro poster. Learn how to manipulate photos and achieve a grungy, textured look.
Gigposter Design the New Sex This tutorial requires no drawing talent, so don’t trip, folks. You will, however, need Adobe Photoshop 7.0 or higher and Illustrator CS2 or higher.
Awesome Colorful Poster Tutorial This tutorial shows you how to put really cool colors in your images. The artist creates a poster with a good mix of typography and strong colors. The mix of simple techniques and a lot of style brings your work to a new level. Follow the tutorial and have fun!.
War Movie Poster Effect In this tutorial, the artist shows some simple but efficient techniques that will help you make great movie posters.
Create and Then Shatter a Grid, While Making a Typographic Poster This is not a typical design. The artist “breaks the grid” in the hopes of achieving a dynamic and exciting layout. So, grab the usual tools of the trade, Photoshop and Illustrator, and follow these steps to create your own results.
Designing a Typographic Concept Poster In this tutorial, the artist takes you through a few steps to show you how he created a poster design.
Awesome Snowboard Poster Through this tutorial, the artist teaches you how to create this cool-looking poster design using some really simple techniques. You’ll learn how to use different types of brushes effectively and also stock images.
Create Powerball Effect for Movie Poster An incredible step-by-step tutorial on creating a powerball effect for movie posters.
Creating A Retro Grunge Poster In this tutorial, the artist creates a retro/grunge-style poster using the pen tool, some textures and playing with the text to make it look more retro.
Design a Sin City Style Poster In this tutorial, the artist creates that Sin City effect in Photoshop, but using Illustrator to create the perspectives and text. He walk you through the process of creating the effect, but it’s always good to play around and test different settings on your own to see how it works.
Make an Inspiring Artistic Poster with Drawn Elements In this tutorial, the artist creates drawn elements with design brushes, brings them into Photoshop and then merges them into a unique poster composition that feels hand-made, stylistically unified and personalized. The techniques here focus on creating an original artistic illustration.
Create a ‘60s Psychedelic Style Concert Poster Go through the steps of creating a retro 1960s psychedelic concert poster. This tutorial relies heavily on the warp tool but includes a few other techniques as well.
Create Sci-Fi Poster Art Make art that’s out of this world with a clever use of blend modes and some of Photoshop’s lesser-known filters.
Create a Fun Halloween Vector Poster In this tutorial, the artist goes over how to create a dark graveyard scene with bats and a glowing moon. Let’s get in the spooky holiday spirit and have some fun making this Halloween poster design.
Design a High-Impact Gig Poster Suitable for Screen Printing In this one, the artist goes for a stylized and coarse effect, rather than a photo-realistic half-tone interpretation. This three-color design looks great on screen, printed from your home printer or screen-printed using the silk-screen printing method.
Create a Constructivist Inspired Poster In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a poster design inspired by the art movement known as Russian Constructivism. The artist cuts up some images and pastes them together to create a stylized revolution.
Dirty Grunge Poster This tutorial shows you how to turn your images into a cool dirty-grunge design, which can be used for posters, prints, CD covers, etc.
How to Design a Rockin’ ‘80s Party Poster In this tutorial, the artist shows you how to design a poster for an ‘80s anthem party. He will create some textures for the background, manipulate a photo to give it some style and make color variations.
B-Movie Poster Art Prepare to shock! Terrify! Amaze! Mark Mayers demonstrates how to recreate the schlock B-movie posters from cinema’s golden age.
Create an Explosive Cover with Precise Photo Manipulation Techniques In this tutorial, the artist does a creative illustration in the style of a video game cover or sci-fi book cover. He does this mostly with photo manipulation techniques. With some cool Photoshop tools, you can turn any of your photos into a stunning, explosive cover.
Design a Vintage Car Poster with Grunge Texture, Font and Brush Set in Photoshop In this tutorial, the artist shows you the process involved in making an old-looking vintage-car poster with grunge textures and font and brush sets in Photoshop.
Create an Inspirational Vector Political Poster This tutorial is inspired by Sheppard Fairey’s famous political poster series for the Obama campaign in the US. The artist shows you how to create this style of design. He starts with basic image-editing techniques in Photoshop to get the guide layers set up, and then he jumps into Illustrator.
Create a Trendy Typographic Poster Design A step-by-step poster design for creative typography.
Design a Retro Summer Poster Illustration This tutorial covers some really cool illustration techniques, exploring Photoshop’s vector capabilities and playing around with textures and selection methods.
Reader Tutorial: Create a Cool Movie Poster in Photoshop In this tutorial, you learn a few good techniques and tips for color correction. Hopefully, this tutorial will benefit you in your pursuit of becoming a better designer.
Create a great retro-style movie poster In this tutorial, Sakke Soini guides you step by step through the process of creating this cool old-school sci-fi poster, based on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Create a Poster Illustration with Floating Floral Elements In this tutorial, the artist creates an interesting poster-sized illustration with floral elements.
UBL Tuts Tutorial A step-by-step Photoshop tutorial on making a retro poster.
Love Poster This Adobe Photoshop CS3 tutorial shows you how to make a love-flavored poster.
WWII Airplane In this tutorial, the artist uses the noise and blur filters to create a brushed-metal effect, and then adds a few layer styles to create a cool little airplane graphic.
Create a Retro Style Poster with Shapes, Patterns, and Eagles Create a retro-style poster. Using the Pathfinder tools, learn how to create shapes by joining paths and applying graphic patterns. Also take advantage of the Appearance palette and have some fun applying multiple strokes to objects.
Meshing Boxing Gloves and Composing an Event Poster Create realistic-looking boxing gloves with the mesh tool and integrate them into an event poster. The explanation here is in depth, and you should already have a good understanding of the mesh tool
Create a Dark and Grungy Poster in Photoshop Make the very dark and grungy poster you see below. This tutorial focuses on blending images together to achieve the desired effect.
Stencil poster effects in Photoshop Digital artist Ian Keltie shows how to combine elements in Photoshop and create a poster with stencilled art to promote your message.
X-Men movie poster In this tutorial, the artist shows you some cool tricks to do some awesome custom wallpaper and movie posters.
Earth Day. Green Planet Learn how to create a beautiful Earth Day, green planet poster in Photoshop.
Lord Of The Rings Poster An interesting and detailed tutorial on the Lord of the Rings poster
Step Up 2 Poster Make this poster in the style of Step Up 2.
Create Fantastic Abstract Poster Effects Make your mark with strong but simple shapes and bold read-my-lips colors. Danilo Rodrigues shows you how.
Poster From the Words Want to make your own cool musical poster? This artist teaches you how.
Create a Pop-Art-Style Poster with Urban City Background in Photoshop In this tutorial, the artist shows you the process he used to create this pop-art-style poster with an urban city background, using a combination of Photoshop filter effects.
Advertisement Tutorials
Perform Laser Eye Surgery on a Photo with Photoshop Create an advertisement about LASIK laser eye surgery. In this Photoshop tutorial, you’ll manipulate a photo of an eye to create a LASIK flap and learn techniques for drawing transparent objects.
Create An Amazing Diamond Advertisement Poster in Photoshop In this tutorial, you will learn a few techniques that might be very useful to you and give you some great ideas when you create your own advertisements.
Creating a Shoe Advertisement Poster Using Floral Elements Create an advertisement poster for your own shoes. When working on an advertisement, you must pay attention to all of the details that the whole world will see.
Designing a Portable Gaming Device Poster In this intermediate-level Photoshop tutorial, the artist walks through making a creative advertisement poster.
Fragmented Golden Phone A very detailed step-by-step tutorial.
Photoshop tutorial - G900 The artist here makes it as easy as possible to understand every step of this tutorial.
Designing a Portable Gaming Device Poster In this intermediate-level Photoshop tutorial, the artist makes an interesting advertisement poster, which he says would be great for advertising your newest product or just getting some design practice.
Make a Turn-of-the-Century Vaudeville Poster In this tutorial, you’ll learn how create a turn-of-the-century vaudeville poster. This unique and appealing style of advertisement was popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Design a Professional Laptop Advert This artist teaches you how to manually create your own vanishing points and how to use the technique to create an awesome screen explosion effect, something sure to dazzle your viewers!
Color Effects to Create a Stunning Print Advertisement In this tutorial, you’ll create a stunning print advertisement.
Professional Advertisement Poster This new tutorial shows you how to make a professional advertisement poster, based on color contrast.
Create an Amazing Ad in Photoshop Use some images and play with the blend and color adjustment modes to create a really cool Nike ad in Photoshop.
Photoshop Tutorial: Sweet Radio Station Advert Design In this tutorial, the artist uses Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop (version CS3) to create a beautiful radio station advertisement. He uses Illustrator to design just a few simple elements.