Episode 6: Photoshopping Obama ‘Hope’ Posters

President Obama’s ‘Hope’ poster is one of the most recognisable pieces of street art of all time, and is being called a cultural phenomenon. Created by Shepard Fairey, this poster became instantly viral and played a huge part in the success of Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign. In this tutorial you’ll learn how to apply the same effect to your own photo using nothing but Photoshop.

This certainly is the most complicated tutorial I’ve produced to date, and that’s largely because this effect (as far as I’m aware) has never been replicated on only photoshop. Through my research the only tutorials I found incorporated Adobe Illustrator. As a result, I had to experiment and create my own method.

Download the original photo.

This is the original photo I’ve used in the tutorial.

Download the Obama Pattern (right click > Save as)

In order to create your own ‘Hope’ poster, you’ll need to download this pattern by right clicking the link and selecting save as. You can easily install this by simply double clicking the file. The pattern should then appear in photoshop.

Download the Nevis Font (Link)

You might also like to download the ‘Nevis’ font, which you can find over at Ten by Twenty. The original uses the font ‘Gotham’, but this is a font you have to purchase. Nevis is the closest free font I could find.

This is the ‘Hope’ poster I created in the tutorial:

Good luck!

By publishing this tutorial, PhotoGuides is in no way endorsing any political party or belief. The tutorial is simply to demonstrate the method used to create this artistic piece.