Homemade Tutorials

Hi people! I’m back with a new and (I hope) simple tutorial. It’s maybe a little late for it, but nevertheless I will be showing you how to replicate the Batman “logo” on the posters for The Dark Knight. There are probably other tutorials out there covering this, I honestly haven’t searched. I just went ahead and created it and thought I’d post it here as a tutorial for everyone to read. Hope you like it. Now, let’s get to work.

Step 1

Go ahead and create a new document (mine is 1024x900). Have your first layer named “Background” and fill it with Black.

Do a Google search for "dark knight logo" and find an image that’s large and clear enough for you to be able to trace out the Batman logo out of it. Paste it in your document and using the Pen tool (P) trace the shape. Make it white (for now, for visibility purposes) and name the layer “Shape”. You should now have something like the below image.

Step 2

Time to start building the light rays behind it. Create a new layer, name it “Light” and make sure it’s below the Shape layer. Grab the Pen tool and draw a spiked shape around the logo, kind of like below.

Give the layer a Radial Blur (Filter › Blur › Radial Blur) with the settings shown below (you may have to slightly adjust the brush size and strength depending on the details you are working on at one time).

Step 3

Now you can either duplicate the Light layer or create a new layer with the Pen tool as described above. Let’s go ahead and duplicate the Light layer (Ctrl+J) and transform it (Ctrl+T) and right-click and select Flip Horizontal. You should now have somewhat more “light”, but the shape looks a little to symmetrical. We need more chaos in there

Grab the Smudge tool (R) and smudge the edges of the Light and Light copy layer, both inwards and outwards, until you get an effect similar to the one below. Obviously, you can keep working on the details of the “light” until you are satisfied; you can also add more layers, if needed.

Step 4

Time to give the light some color. Duplicate each of the light layers (Light and Light copy). Then go ahead and select a color like #41b5ff as your foreground color. Holding down Ctrl, click on the first of the two new duplicated layers (this selects its visible pixels). Press Alt+Backspace to fill the shape with the selected foreground color. Do the same for the second duplicated layer. You should now have four “light” layers, two white and two light blue, each white layer should be below its blue copy. Select the Blending mode for each of the blue light layers as Color Burn. The result should look like the image below.

Step 5

Duplicate the Shape layer, press U and at the top select its fill color as #459ccb. Rasterize the layer (right-click, Rasterize Layer), then Ctrl+click the layer thumbnail to select its pixels. Go to the top menu: Select › Modify › Contract and select a 10px value, then click OK. This selects an area inside the shape that’s “contracted” by 10 pixels. Press Delete to clear the selected area, leaving you with the 10px border.

Let’s name this layer “Highlight” to try and keep everything a little organized. As a hint, it’s always a good idea to name your layers as it helps you find the correspondent layer to the shape on the screen much faster.

Apply it a Radial Blur (Filter › Blur › Radial Blur) with the same settings as before. I found it to be necessary to transform it and adjust its size a little (enlarge it) until it looks like the image below. Then, while holding Ctrl, click on the Shape layer’s thumbnail and click Add Layer Mask.This adds a mask in the shape of the (you guessed it) Batman shape. (Is that clever wording or what? ) ). Right click on the mask and select Apply Layer Mask.

Next, add an empty Layer Mask to the Highlight layer, then duplicate the layer 4 times, making 5 identical Highlight layers, each with an empty mask.

Press D to select the default colors for background and foreground. Select the Gradient tool (G) and make it a Radial Gradient. Select the original Highlight layer and apply the gradient as arrow #1 shows below. Select the second Highlight layer and apply the gradient according to arrow #2, and so forth until the last Highlight layer.

After you’re done with the Highlight layers, the result should resemble the image below.

And…that’s it!

The Dark Knight logo is complete! I hope you liked creating it, as well as enjoyed the movie itself. It was hands down the best movie of 2008 and one of the best movies I can remember seeing.

Go ahead and download the PSD file below. If any of you get to create it, I would love to see yours!

Download The Dark Knight Logo PSD file

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