Here is an obama style poster tut.
Let's make a poster!




Alright, open up your image of choice, this will be the backbone of the poster.
I'm using a photo of myself.
Convert your photo to grayscale if it isn't already.




Eliminate the background from your image, you can use paths, layer masks, or simply the eraser.
As you can see, I used the path tool.




After you've traced it using the path tool, click "Make selection from path".
Then copy the selection.




Paste the selection, then under the layer dialog (ctrl + L) select "pasted layer" and click new layer (the white square in the bottom left corner of layer dialog.
This should give you your photo, without the background.




With this new layer selected, go under the color menu and click "Posterize"




Set the number of colors to five and click OK.
What you should get is your image with a reduced number of colors.




If you'd like, zoom in and clean up the colors a little bit.
Get rid of any stray pixels that are in the wrong area.




Now making sure that only the new layer is visible, save as a .png file to preserve the transparency.




Open Inkscape, then open up your saved image.




Click your image to select it, then click "trace bitmap" under the path menu.




Select "colors" and set the number of scans to 5, then click OK.




Select the darkest layer of your image using the node selection tool.
This is a triangular cursor on the left right under the normal cursor tool.




Click shift+ctrl+f, or click the fill rectangle in the lower left hand corner. to bring up the color dialog.
Change the colors to whatever you want using the color wheel or the color code box on the right.
the obama colors (from lightest to darkest) in RGBA code are:
Offwhite: f7e1acff Pale blue: 729098ff Red: b32d34ff Dark Blue: 06304aff




Select the Final gray color to change into the stripes.




While selected bring up the color dialog and select the pattern fill (checkerboard square) and chose "Black Stripes 1:1"




Click the stripes layer again, then travel to the top left corner of the image. You should see a X, a square and a circle.
The X is representative of your image, the postion of the circle controls the direction of the stripes, and the square controls the thickness of the stripes.





Rotate the circle by dragging it, drag till it is directly under the X. Hold ctrl to accomplish this.
Now drag the square in till the stripes are reasonably small.




You should be left with an image similar to this.




Select your whole image with the normal cursor then select "export bitmap" under the file menu.




Edit the dimensions to be within 1 or 2 thousand, and export.




Also "Save as" your image as a .svg file to backup your work.




Open up your .png file in Gimp, and using the select all color tool, select all the black within the stripes.




Color all of the stripes within your subject the pale blue color, being careful avoid coloring over the stripey outline that surrounds the image.




Click the remaining black using the select all tool, then cut it out (ctrl +x).





Make a new layer behind your pic, and fill it with the cream color.
Now merge these to layers together.




Now use the magic wand tool and select the cream background and cut it.
We did this to eliminate the black stripe outline from the image, while mainting transparency.




Horray! Now we're basically done. But I'll show photos on the background construction.








And We're done! Now go plaster your new poster over your political minded friends' obama poster!
Feel free to ask questions.


DO NOT RIP!
Do not reproduce without permission. All images copyright their respective owners.
Tutorial Copy right Rick Metzger 2009.

Obama poster craziness in gimp and inkscape, inspired by the poster by Shepard Fairey.