Plastic Gem #45: Kirk Alberts' Worn Paint

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Plastic Gem # 45 : Photoshop Tips and Tricks - Worn Paint

Difficulty: Easy

Our programmers felt like airing their minds out for a day so they asked me to take over for a Gem or two. I'm going to talk about the tool that I use most; Photoshop. I'll cover a few little tricks that might help those of you who are new Photoshop and maybe give users who are more experienced some weapons to add to their arsenal.

This one's pretty easy. If you guys dig it, I'll do some more.

A lot of people will use filters to achieve this look. Being a total control freak, I don't like using too many filters. Don't get me wrong I'll use some, but only in moderation. I realize that there are probably 1,239 different ways to create this texture but this is how I do it.

Creating worn-looking images on metal/concrete


First I'll start with this base image. Obviously you can use whatever you want.



Next I'll create the image that I want on a new layer. I'm going to use some type and rasterize it. You can use any image you want. (Cool font, huh?)



Here I'll choose the erasure tool and set it to a brush like the one above that will give me a scattering effect.



Here's what I'll use for the erasure settings. You might tweak the settings depending on what brush you've chosen and desired effect.



Now make sure you're on the layer with the graphic. Using your erasure tool, randomly erase some parts of your image by placing your brush in an area and pressing in varied amounts of time so you get a more realistic look. You can also use a smaller brush or reduce the size of the one you're using to create some scratch effects.



On your layers pallette select Overlay. If you don't like the effect sometimes Multiply will work better.



Next you want to select the pixels on the top layer, do this by holding Contol and clicking on the thumbnail of the layer with the image in it. You'll see the "dancing" lines around the image indicating you've done so.



Now hide the "dancing" lines by hitting Control+H. This keeps the pixels selected and allows you to see what you're doing better. Now select the background layer with the base texture in it. Make sure the image is still selected. You can check to see if it is by hitting Control+H. Pressing this again will toggle the hide feature off and on.



Use Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast to adjust the area selected in the background. This will make your image on the top layer more pronounced.



Hit Control+D to deselect the the pixels you had selected on the top layer then flatten the layers. I like to use a Sharpen filter (I did say in moderation) to bring out more detail. I almost always use Unsharp Mask to do this.


And here's your finished texture.

I hope someone got something out of this. I plan on doing a few more if anyone is interested.

That's it! Next week we will start working on ////////////////////// something/////////////. Have a great weekend.