How to: draw graffiti in Photoshop

Some people consider graffiti to be an artistic expression while some others believe it’s just another form of vandalism. Whatever your opinion is about it, I’m sure you’ll like this easy Photoshop tutorial with which you can learn how to apply original graffiti effects to any wall in your photos. Let’s get started!

1. First of all, graffiti must be a pixel-based image. This means you can’t draw it right on the wall with the font tool, or use pre-defined shapes. So in this first step we’ll create the graffiti image by opening a blank document, writing something on it with any cool graffiti font you have and saving it as a PNG file. In my example I also added a stroke effect to make it more realistic.

2. Open the wall image and paste the graffiti image on it as a new layer.

3. Now click on Edit > Transform > Perspective and apply a perspective effect to the graffiti to make it fit the wall in the most realistic way possible. If the graffiti is too large for the wall, use the Free transform tool (Edit > Free transform or Ctrl+T) to resize it.

4. Change the graffiti’s layer blending mode to “Overlay”.

5. We’re almost done! As the graffiti still looks too “perfect” to be real, we’ll need to apply some blurring. Duplicate the graffiti layer and apply a Gaussian blur filter with a value of 5 pixels to this duplicated layer.

6. Finally, select the layer you just blurred (by clicking on its thumbnail while pressing the Ctrl key) and press delete. In this way you’ll erase the contents of the layer, but keeping the blurred borders, which is exactly what we want.

7. As a final touch, I erased the graffiti in those areas where the wall is torn down, but you may not need do that. You can also lower the opacity value of the graffiti layer to around 80, so that it blends with the wall in a more realistic way. Your graffiti is finished!