affinity photo Recreating the look of an 80s poster

[SolidSnake2003]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but I do have a question about Affinity Photo.  I would like to make this creation of mine to look like a an old retro 80s movie poster. The kind of retro look I am looking for is something like creation by Jeff Chapman. He has a video speed process available here: 

I don't know if there is a way to recreate this kind of look using Affinity Photo. I hope it is OK I am asking here. 

Edit: Here is a poster that looks more like my creation, but it has a retro look added: 

 

[Twolane]

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=affinity+photo+create+an+80s+poster+look&t=vivaldi&atb=v395-1&ia=web

[SolidSnake2003]

Hope it is OK I asked.

[GarryP]

24 minutes ago, SolidSnake2003 said:

Hope it is OK I asked.

But you haven’t asked anything yet.
I’m seeing some statements and examples but I’m not seeing a question.

[SolidSnake2003]

22 minutes ago, GarryP said:

But you haven’t asked anything yet.
I’m seeing some statements and examples but I’m not seeing a question.

@GarryP Sorry for not clarifying. I would like to make my cover look like an old 80s poster. I have the art effect done and would like to make it look vintage. I know how to use textures and blend modes. The part I'm stuck at is do I use adjustment layers or is there something like the Camera Raw Filter in Affinity Photo. Is the Develop persona like Camera Raw?

[GarryP]

I don’t know what the Camera Raw Filter does in Photoshop so I don’t know if there is an equivalent in Photo, but someone else probably does.

What you may need to do will be very dependent upon what you mean by “make it look vintage”. That can mean lots of different things to different people.

If you can define what you mean by “vintage”, preferably giving some time-codes from the video where a similar effect has been created (both before and after to show the difference), then someone may be able to help but, as your requirements stand, they’re probably too vague for anyone to be able to give you precise instructions at the moment.

(Ask a vague question, get vague answers.)

[SolidSnake2003]

17 minutes ago, GarryP said:

I don’t know what the Camera Raw Filter does in Photoshop so I don’t know if there is an equivalent in Photo, but someone else probably does.

What you may need to do will be very dependent upon what you mean by “make it look vintage”. That can mean lots of different things to different people.

If you can define what you mean by “vintage”, preferably giving some time-codes from the video where a similar effect has been created (both before and after to show the difference), then someone may be able to help but, as your requirements stand, they’re probably too vague for anyone to be able to give you precise instructions at the moment.

(Ask a vague question, get vague answers.)

Sorry for being vague, I'm just unsure how to word what I want to create other than show example of what I want.

[GarryP]

I understand that it can be difficult to give precise requirements when you don’t know what you need to do, but it’s also difficult for other people to know what you mean when you give vague requirements.

For instance, say I show you an image of an ellipse which is filled in red and has a thin orange stroke.

If I show you this image and say I want something that “looks like this”, what do I mean by “looks like”?

Is it the ellipse that I want to re-create, or the fill colour, or the outline width (in relation to the size of ellipse, or not), or the position of the ellipse in the image, or the size of the ellipse, or the relative difference between the fill and stroke colours, or a mix of any two or more of those things or other things?

And that’s just an ellipse with a simple fill and stroke.

When you offer an image which has been manipulated for many hours with many different tools and techniques and then ask how can you make something that “looks like this” then I’m sure you can imagine that the situation gets much, much more complex and, as such, the number of possibilities gets huge.

[smadell]

Hi, @SolidSnake2003. First, a disclaimer: I didn't watch either of the two videos you included in your original post. I did pull up a number of movie posters from the 80's to see if they had any obvious common traits. Also, when you said (in a different thread, I think) that you gave the poster a "painterly" look, my best guess is that you used the Tone Mapping persona to do that, cranking up the "local contrast" slider. Personally, I think you went too far, but that is not anything I could undo working from a JPG.

I downloaded the last JPG version of the poster you included, and put a number of edits on top. I faded the image a bit, added some faint Perlin noise, did a little color grade, and added a modest vignette. I also put a very slight blur on the whole thing, because (I think) photos, or even movie posters, in the 80's weren't known for being uber-sharpened.

I'm including a JPG with the original, my edit, and the layer stack for the edit (below). Also, I'm attaching the .afphoto file for the edit if you're interested. I'd love to hear what you think.

Twisted Fates (edit).afphoto

[SolidSnake2003]

14 hours ago, smadell said:

Hi, @SolidSnake2003. First, a disclaimer: I didn't watch either of the two videos you included in your original post. I did pull up a number of movie posters from the 80's to see if they had any obvious common traits. Also, when you said (in a different thread, I think) that you gave the poster a "painterly" look, my best guess is that you used the Tone Mapping persona to do that, cranking up the "local contrast" slider. Personally, I think you went too far, but that is not anything I could undo working from a JPG.

I downloaded the last JPG version of the poster you included, and put a number of edits on top. I faded the image a bit, added some faint Perlin noise, did a little color grade, and added a modest vignette. I also put a very slight blur on the whole thing, because (I think) photos, or even movie posters, in the 80's weren't known for being uber-sharpened.

I'm including a JPG with the original, my edit, and the layer stack for the edit (below). Also, I'm attaching the .afphoto file for the edit if you're interested. I'd love to hear what you think.

Twisted Fates (edit).afphoto 2.46 MB · 2 downloads

Thanks @smadell I redid the painterly effect, and made it more subtle this time around. I also removed the shadow around the logo, and added a light flare to the bike light. I also got your project file. I liked the effect, just got rid of the vignette cause I didn't want it around text since it was all merged. I also added a few old VHS textures I found on a free VHS boxart PSD I found. Plus added a couple of stickers to complete the retro look.

 

 

[iconoclast]

I think your poster in fact already looks much like an 80s-poster, but you did a little too much at some points. E.g. the "IT"-logo would be much more effective if it would be simply white or red, I think. This gradient damages its readability and lets it sink into the colours of the background.

And the colours are an important point too, that still keeps your design away from the 80s style you are looking for, I think. If you take a look at the 80s posters, you will see that they are mostly coloured in blue and red. That was a typical colour code of that times. Today it is more blue and yellow/orange. This contrast scheme is meant to suggest opposites (e.g. darkness and light, good and evil...). I can't remember specific posters from the 80s, but a good example from the last years is the poster of "Blade Runner 2049" (orange/yellow vs. blue). A very typical thing for 80s movies was that darkness/night was always visualized by blue lighting, to make it possible to show whats happening, even if it is dark. Often so blue, that it looked very synthetic. The colour grading you used in your design looks a little more like "Lord of the Rings".

[SolidSnake2003]

30 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

I think your poster in fact already looks much like an 80s-poster, but you did a little too much at some points. E.g. the "IT"-logo would be much more effective if it would be simply white or red, I think. This gradient damages its readability and lets it sink into the colours of the background.

And the colours are an important point too, that still keeps your design away from the 80s style you are looking for, I think. If you take a look at the 80s posters, you will see that they are mostly coloured in blue and red. That was a typical colour code of that times. Today it is more blue and yellow/orange. This contrast scheme is meant to suggest opposites (e.g. darkness and light, good and evil...). I can't remember specific posters from the 80s, but a good example from the last years is the poster of "Blade Runner 2049" (orange/yellow vs. blue). A very typical thing for 80s movies was that darkness/night was always visualized by blue lighting, to make it possible to show whats happening, even if it is dark. Often so blue, that it looked very synthetic. The colour grading you used in your design looks a little more like "Lord of the Rings".

@iconoclast The orange color is supposed to be the deadlights of Pennywise/IT, and the green is because of Maturin the turtle from the source material.

[iconoclast]

Just now, SolidSnake2003 said:

@iconoclast So I need to change the colors of the image?

It's your decision, but I think a poster for this movie would'nt have looked like yours in the 80s. The TV-Movie "IT", from 1990, had a poster simply based on red and white. Unusual but effective. But the most movie posters from the 80s were based on blue and red, as far as I remember. At least Horror- and SciFi-Movie-Posters.

By the way, for VHS there exists an official logo. You don't need to rebuild it. You can simply download it as PNG from the internet.

[SolidSnake2003]

3 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

It's your decision, but I think a poster for this movie would'nt have looked like yours in the 80s. The TV-Movie "IT", from 1990, had a poster simply based on red and white. Unusual but effective. But the most movie posters from the 80s were based on blue and red, as far as I remember. At least Horror- and SciFi-Movie-Posters.

By the way, for VHS there exists an official logo. You don't need to rebuild it. You can simply download it as PNG from the internet.

@iconoclast I actually didn't "rebuild" the VHS logo, that is an actual sticker from a VHS tape I found through google. I think it was on a tape for a made for tv movie called Dark Night of the Scarecrow.

The main inspiration for this cover is the original Stranger Things season 1 poster. I tried to recreate the double background, but there wasn't really anything I could take from IT that is like the wall light letter background. The closest I could think of is either a bunch of red balloons, or from the end of the movie a picture from the final battle.

[iconoclast]

I don't know stranger things, so I can't say anything about that. But as I said, your colouring doesn't look like an 80s Horror-Poster. Even from our today's perspective, it doesn't really loo like a Horror-Poster, but like a Fantasy- or Mystery-Poster.

You don't need red and blue objects. The colours of objects depend on the colour of the light they reflect. If you take a look e.g. at some "Terminator"-Posters, you will see that Arnie seems to have blue skin there. It is because of the light. At lunchtime usually the daylight is as white as it can be, so it shows all objects in their native colours. In the evening, at sunset, all things get a red tint. And at night everythig becomes grey, but with a blue colour cast (especially in movies of the 80s). 

Just take a look at the examples in the Youtube-Videos you linked above. The second one has this blue/red-scheme. The first one shows faces lightened by warm lights, but the scenery is much darker than on your poster. The most areas are black and only the kids are highlighted. That produces suspense. Your poster almost suggests peace and quiet. You don't need to put stickers on the poster that claim "Horror" (and you shouldn't) if you visualize this horror on the poster itself.

Unfortunately it takes some studies and time to learn about lighting and colours, I'm afraid. But I would recommend you to take closer looks at the posters from the 80s, if it is really important for you.

[SolidSnake2003]

37 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

I don't know stranger things, so I can't say anything about that. But as I said, your colouring doesn't look like an 80s Horror-Poster. Even from our today's perspective, it doesn't really loo like a Horror-Poster, but like a Fantasy- or Mystery-Poster.

You don't need red and blue objects. The colours of objects depend on the colour of the light they reflect. If you take a look e.g. at some "Terminator"-Posters, you will see that Arnie seems to have blue skin there. It is because of the light. At lunchtime usually the daylight is as white as it can be, so it shows all objects in their native colours. In the evening, at sunset, all things get a red tint. And at night everythig becomes grey, but with a blue colour cast (especially in movies of the 80s). 

Just take a look at the examples in the Youtube-Videos you linked above. The second one has this blue/red-scheme. The first one shows faces lightened by warm lights, but the scenery is much darker than on your poster. The most areas are black and only the kids are highlighted. That produces suspense. Your poster almost suggests peace and quiet. You don't need to put stickers on the poster that claim "Horror" (and you shouldn't) if you visualize this horror on the poster itself.

Unfortunately it takes some studies and time to learn about lighting and colours, I'm afraid. But I would recommend you to take closer looks at the posters from the 80s, if it is really important for you.

@iconoclast This is the poster for the first season of Stranger Things:

[GarryP]

3 hours ago, SolidSnake2003 said:

I also added a few old VHS textures I found on a free VHS boxart PSD I found.

Would a poster have stickers on it?
You might be better-off sticking to a single form of media for a single design rather than adding bits from here and there.

I agree with some of the comments above that there’s perhaps ‘too much going on’ and that it looks ‘washed out’ for my liking, a bit like looking at it through a mesh screen. Having said that, as has been said above, it’s not my poster so my opinion doesn’t really matter.

A big problem with trying to re-create an “80s poster” is that there’s no such thing as an “80s poster”, as such.
There were countless posters created in the 80’s but their styles are all pretty-much different, even for things of similar types.
Even keeping just to 80’s horror posters there were large differences. Just do a web search for 1980s horror poster image to see many examples.

My advice for future projects would be to find something specific that you like and then try to re-create it as closely as you can, in its original form, with as few changes as possible (given various resource/tool/artistic/etc. limitations).
By doing so you should gain some insight into how posters of that kind can be created and which tools and techniques you needed to use to do so.
You can then try others and see what differences there were in the re-creation process.
That way you will start to build up a ‘toolkit of knowledge and experience’ that you can call upon when you try something more original.

One place to start could be with something like: https://theposterdb.com/textless
Compare the textless version with the original version and try to re-create the original with the textless version as a starting point.

Having said all of that however, if you are enjoying the process of creating the posters then feel free to ignore everything I have said.

[Alfred]

4 hours ago, SolidSnake2003 said:

I also added a few old VHS textures I found on a free VHS boxart PSD I found.

 

45 minutes ago, GarryP said:

Would a poster have stickers on it?

The plastic case for a VHS tape might well have stickers on it, but usually affixed to the case itself rather than the cardboard insert that has the artwork printed on it. Posters don’t normally have stickers on them, other than to add new information about an event (e.g. ‘Last chance to see’ or ‘Sold out’).

[SolidSnake2003]

@GarryP @iconoclast @Twolane @smadell @Alfred Sorry if I am being too difficult to work with. I very much like the look of the original IT VHS box/poster. There was a version I found on YouTube with Pennywise changed to the new one by Bill Skarsgard instead of Tim Curry. I also prefer the original 1990 logo to the new one, but I have never been able to replicate the look of it. The biggest thing I want my cover to convey is that this story is Georgie surviving instead of being killed in the first 10 minutes.  Should I attach to a post a version of the project file featuring the character and foreground cutouts with no background?

One reason Stranger Things has been used is that its kind of like a Stephen King story, and many of its ads are inspired by retro designs.

[iconoclast]

But if you look at that "Stranger Things"-Poster, you can see that it is coloured much darker than yours. And it uses the blue/red-scheme I was talking about. And the title is red with a relative good contrast to the background. You should always think about what is important for the effect you want to achieve. Not only what seems to look good. On the last version of your poster, the two things that catch the eye first are your signature and the VHS-sticker, because they have the best contrast to the background. The "IT"-logo is sunken in the background so that it is nearly invisible. And as I already said, the mood of the poster suggests mystery, not horror. If that's your goal, you've got it.

[SolidSnake2003]

12 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

But if you look at that "Stranger Things"-Poster, you can see that it is coloured much darker than yours. And it uses the blue/red-scheme I was talking about. And the title is red with a relative good contrast to the background. You should always think about what is important for the effect you want to achieve. Not only what seems to look good. On the last version of your poster, the two things that catch the eye first are your signature and the VHS-sticker, because they have the best contrast to the background. The "IT"-logo is sunken in the background so that it is nearly invisible. And as I already said, the mood of the poster suggests mystery, not horror. If that's your goal, you've got it.

If I add more shadows  and light to the houses will that help illustrate horror? I will work on the background. The space background i can tweak the green color to blue. For rec i will have to figure out a background where there can be red balloons. The only other red background from the film is a character's bathroom covered with blood. I wouldn't use that to keep my work from being nsfw 

[iconoclast]

Usually the best way is to think about such things before you start creating an image. I would at least keep a backup of your actual version, before you start turning it inside out completely. If you look at the "Stranger Things"-poster, there is a background coloured in red on the left and blue on the right side. And the whole scene is gathered by a black vignette. That could be a solution for your design too. If you don't like the blue/red-scheme, test out if the vignette works without it.

For my taste Pennywise looks too much like a sidekick on your poster. He is the character the whole story is based on. He and the "Club of loosers" on the other side. I don't remember who the guy on the left is - the one with the walking cane. Is he important? I could imagine Pennywise's face big, looking evil in the background, and the other figures smaller standing in front of him. The vignette also gives a good background contrast to the text elements.

[SolidSnake2003]

15 hours ago, iconoclast said:

Usually the best way is to think about such things before you start creating an image. I would at least keep a backup of your actual version, before you start turning it inside out completely. If you look at the "Stranger Things"-poster, there is a background coloured in red on the left and blue on the right side. And the whole scene is gathered by a black vignette. That could be a solution for your design too. If you don't like the blue/red-scheme, test out if the vignette works without it.

For my taste Pennywise looks too much like a sidekick on your poster. He is the character the whole story is based on. He and the "Club of loosers" on the other side. I don't remember who the guy on the left is - the one with the walking cane. Is he important? I could imagine Pennywise's face big, looking evil in the background, and the other figures smaller standing in front of him. The vignette also gives a good background contrast to the text elements.

@iconoclast Here is a preview where I added a vignette to the cover as is before the painterly effect and text:

 

 

[SolidSnake2003]

Sorry I was correcting my previous post, and added the new upload to a new post.

[iconoclast]

It is still not bad. But to be honest, from the point of view that it shall be a Horror-Poster, it is not horrible enough, in my opinion. There is a tiny Horror-Accent on the top right of the poster, where we see Pennywise, but the whole thing looks much more dreamy than spooky. Mystery, not Horror. And I ask myself, why does the bicycle lamp shine so bright, even it isn't really dark? Maybe I'm not the right one to judge about your design.