How to do distressed, grunge or rubber stamp designs in Photoshop

Grunge style

Put type or whatever you want distressed, grunged or “rubber stamped” on one layer in Photoshop with a white background layer beneath it. The create a blank layer above it (Cmd/Ctl-Opt-Shift-N).

Then you need to create some clouds. Very easy. First of all make sure your background and foreground colours in the Tools palette are the default black and white. To do this click on the tiny black and white squares in the Tools palette to the bottom left hand corner of the foreground and background colours. Or, simply press D!

Now (see below) and go Filter > Render > Clouds.

How to create clouds in Photoshop

Once you have your clouds you need to get rid of all the greys and turn the layer into just black and white. There are a number of ways to do this: Go Image > Adjustments > Curves (Cmd/Ctl-M) and alter the line as seen above or you could go Image > Adjustments > Threshold. (You can get the same effect through Contrast or Levels, in fact!)

Set this layer’s Blending Mode to Screen, Color Dodge or Linear Dodge and play around with the opacity. To get the “holes” smaller on this “dalmation dog” layer, make the layer smaller with Free Transform (Cmd/Ctl-T) and copy it (Option-click and drag the layer with the Move Tool (V) so it covers the desired area.

You can see in areas of the top, pink grunge picture I have copied some “dalmation dog” layers over other “dalmation dog” layers to create a specially distressed effect!

Rubber stamp

Tags: clouds, color, colours, cover, curve, curves, design, distress, dodge, grunged, holes, image adjustments, images, modes, move tool, opacities, opacity, palette, Photoshop, rubber stamp designs, squares, threshold, transform, type, white background

This article was posted on Thursday, September 6th, 2007 at 5:14 pm and is filed under Photoshop.
You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS 2.0 feed.

Download free “How to Market Yourself Online” ebook
Discover the secrets behind building a better web presence

Everything you will need to know about self-marketing on the web, including:

Creating websites
Setting up WordPress
Writing blog posts
Getting links
Driving traffic to your site
Using social media
Offering RSS feeds and subscriptions
Getting found on Google

3 Responses to “How to do distressed, grunge or rubber stamp designs in Photoshop”

Countdown, on September 15th, 2007 at 4:09 pm, said:

No one made it easier to understand! Watermarking ‘stamps’ with the postmark ‘rubberstamp’ really looks believable. Thank you so much for sharing. Keep those ideas coming.
Rob Cubbon, on September 16th, 2007 at 1:17 pm, said:

@ Countdown. Thanks for your input. Watermarking them or “knocking them back” can increase their believability.
GrungeBlog, on February 6th, 2009 at 1:45 pm, said:

Thank you for your article! Always wanted to learn how to do so:)

Graphic and Web Designer London UK