• Grunge Textures

Final Image Preview

This image is inspired from the cover of LAYOUT, dasar & penerapannya, a graphic design book by Surianto Rustan published by Gramedia in Indonesia. Before starting this tutorial, see the result below. Click here to see the image at a higher resolution. The Illustrator and Photoshop files can be found at the bottom of this post. You can also see more of work at my website DesainDigital.com

Step 1: Creating Word in Illustrator

Open up your Illustrator. Create new document (File|New) with Document Profile: Print, size: A4.

Create word LAYOUT using tool type.

Step 2

Select the word. Click Object|Expand. Click OK.

Click Object|Compoundd Path|Release.

Step 3

With tool select arrange every character until align nicely.

With the direct selection tool, move some points within the U to give it more room.

Here’s what i come up with.

Step 4

Select all the characters. Then from the toolbox, click the switch icon to switch the fill and stroke color.

Step 5

Above the L character create a box.

To make sure it aligns perfectly with the L, click Edit|preferences. Make sure you select Snap to Point. This small step will save you lots of time when arranging objects.

Step 6

Create a box behind the Y.

Another box behind O.

Another box behind T.

Step 7: Start Adding Text – L

Activate the type tool. Hover the cursor over the L. You will see a circle around the cursor. Now click to insert some text inside the L shape. I used the famous lorem ipsum text generated from lipsum.

I’m using Helvetica Neue Lt Std here because it’s simply the best font ever and works in every style. For L i use Bold Condensed style. If you dont have this font feel free to use other similar font.

Step 8

Double click the text to select all. From the paragraph panel select alignment justify.

Click on the small arrow to open the panel menu and select Hypenation. Move slider to Better Spacing.

Here’s what i have so far.

Step 9

Paste some more text inside the box above L. Change the style to Light Condensed.

Step 10: Y

Lets move on to the Y now. This one is much more complex and take more time doing it. Paste some text into the box, not the Y shape. Use style Light Condensed.

Select characters inside the Y shape and change its style to bold condensed.

Repeat this process with all the text found within the outline of the Y.  As I said before this takes lots of time.

After the required characters have been changed to bold, you can then click the eye icon in front of the Y shape layer to hide it. Here’s what i have so far.

Step 11: O

Select the outer circle of O. Resize it until it is taller than its box.

Step 12

Select the outer circle and box. Open the pathfinder panel and click Exclude. Right click and ungroup.

Step 13

Select top and bottom path then hit delete.

Step 14

Add text to each path. Use align justify for right and left path. Use align center for circle path.

Step 15: U

Select the U shape. Using tool move rotate it 90 degrees.

Step 16

add another load of text. Use style bold condensed.

Step 17

Using the rotate tool, rotate the U shape back to its previous place.

Step 18:T

Add text to T shape.

Step 19

Open the panel character. Double text leading size, in my case from 7,2 to 14.

Step 20

Add text to the box behind the T shape. Use the same text leading like in the previous step.

Step 21

Insert minus leading. Remember step 19? I have text leading 7, so in my case i use -7.

And we’ll have both text overlapping and create a T shape.

Step 23: A

We haven’t worked on A. With the pen, create a shape covering half the A.

Step 24

Insert some text.

Step 25

Using the move tool, rotate the shape until it perfectly aligns horizontally.

Step 26

Using the rotate tool, rotate the shape back to its previous place.

Step 27

Do the same to the other half.

Step 28

Don’t forget to add text to the bridge. After this you can hide A shape.

Finally this is what i have.

Step 29: Export to PDF

Now, we need to import this into Photoshop. First, we need to save it to a format that can preserve its vector quality. I recommend PDF for this.

Click File|Save As. Choose format file PDF. In PDF setting use Press Quality. This setting is used for commercial printing and saves all the details relating to the composition of the image.

Step 30: Import to Photoshop

In Photoshop click File|Open. Choose the PDF file we just created. Use resolution 300 pixel per inch or 300 ppi.

Why we use resolution 300 ppi?

Press Quality setting creates a 300 ppi PDF. So, using resolution 300 ppi, the file is imported at full size, without losing any pixel resolution. This means we still have every detail created from within Illustrator. The picture below shows the imported picture in 100%, white background. As you can see, the text still very sharp.

Step 31

PDF will be imported as a transparent picture.

Step 32: Start Editing in Photoshop

Hit ctrl+A, ctrl+C. Create new file with size A4 with a resolution of 300 ppi. Hit ctrl+V to paste our text here.

Hit ctrl+I to invert text color to white. Click Layer|Convert to Smart Object. Hit ctrl+T. Rotate text.

Step 33

Create new layer under text. Add a radial gradient from black to white.

Step 34

Download grunge textures from deviantart. Paste it behind text.

Use blending mode Multiply with 65% opacity.

Step 35:

Return to our text layer. Click Layer|Layer Style|Drop Shadow. Use setting below.

Use this setting for the Outer Glow.

Conclusion

Yeah, we’re done!. As you can see, all techniques used here is just simple. You can learn it from a basic book on design and typography. What you really need here is just patience and lots of free time. Please share your opinions on the comment form. You can see the final image below or from this link.

Step 1

Open Illustrator and create a new document 1024px width by 768px height, with an RGB color.  Select type tool (T) and write “FLORAL” in black (#000000). You can use any other color if you wish to. Keep the font as Arial Black, size as 150pt, leading as 180pt and tracking 0 as shown below. Name the layer as “floral”.

Step 2

After creating the floral layer, copy the layer and move it below the floral layer. Name it as “floral_style”. Now disable the “floral” layer and click on the “floral_style” layer. Open the graphic style by clicking Windows > Graphic Styles (Shift+F5). Once the Graphic Style dialogue box is open click on the right side button to get the drop down list. Select Open graphic style Library > Artistic Effects.

Once the Artistic Effects dialogue box opens click on the “Paint Brush” effect.

Now keeping the “floral_style” layer selected make the stroke color as black (#000000). You should get something like this.

Step 3

Then go to Effects > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Keep the Blur Radius as 6.0 and hit OK. This will give some shadow to the text. It will look like this now.

Step 4

Now we will be adding the flowers to the text. The flowers I have used can be downloaded from here.

Open the fbg_lldkiejn.ai file in Illustrator. We will be using different elements from this file to create our floral effect. Ungroup the shown image from the open file.

After ungrouping, take two yellow flowers and place them as shown below in the middle of the “floral” and “floral_blur” layers. Your image should look like this now.

Step 5

After this, start ungrouping some more flowers from the image and start pasting them around the text. Try to get something similar to this.

Step 6

Lets add some stones to it. Go to Windows > Symbol Library > Nature.  Add some stones to the image. Now select everything (Ctrl+A) and group (Ctrl+G) or go to Object > Group.

Step 7

We are done with Illustrator now. Open Photoshop and create a new document with 1024px width and 768px height. Keep the resolution as 100px  and background as transparent. Save it as floral_wallpaper.psd

Step 8

For the background we will be using a paper texture. Download the old paper background texture from here.

Open this texture in and place it in your psd. Select it and go to Edit > Transform > Rotate 90^O CCW. Adjust it properly with the document size. Name it as “paper”. You will see that there are some black portions around the image. Select it with the magic wand (W) tool and delete.

Now make a layer below this paper layer and fill it with #dab787. After deleting the black potions Ctrl + click on the paper layer. Go to Image > Adjustments > Brightness/ Contrast. Give brightness as +52 and contrast as -50. Hit OK. Change the blending mode to Luminosity and opacity to 57%.

Step 9

Drag the grouped floral text from Illustrator to Photoshop. Place it above the paper layer.  Tilt it a bit. Double click on the floral text layer and add some drop shadow to it. Give Blend Mode as Luminosity, Opacity as 45%, angle 120degree, Distance 3px, Spread 4% and size as 6px.

Step 10

Its time to add some watercolor and coffee stains brushes to the background now. You can download the watercolor brushes from here and coffee stain brushes from here. Once you have applied different watercolour and coffee stains brushes decrease the opacity and change the blending mode of some of them. Make sure to use a different layer for each of brush so that you can play with the opacity and blending mode easily.  I have made it like this.

Step 11

We will add some more shadow to the text layer so that it gets some depth. Make a new layer below the text layer. Take brush tool (B) and with a soft rounded 40 px brush and opacity 57% make some areas near the text layer as black. Erase any part which overlaps with the text. It should come out something like this.

Step 12

We are almost done! But the wallpaper is looking a bit empty. So, let’s add some butterflies to it. I have used Illustrator default butterfly symbols. You can get them from Windows > Symbol Library > Nature

Conclusion

Here we’ve got the final piece. I hope you liked this one and don’t hesitate asking questions if you encounter some confusing or overwhelming steps. Have fun!

PSD File

In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to create the image above using a combination of glows and blends in 7 steps. All the files for this tutorial are at the bottom of this post.

I was watching an advert on BBC 2 (in the UK) for the new series of Heroes and it had a great animation of the number 2. Check the BBC2 Heroes website for an idea of what i’m talking about. So I thought I’d try to create something similar.

Step 1

Create a new blank psd file with the background set to black. Create a new layer and fill it with a radial gradient of green/blue to black originating from the right of the image and then set the layer opacity to 30%

Step 2

Create 3 new radial fills going from red to transparent, green to transparent and blue to transparent, and place them within their own group

Step 3

Create a new layer, set the foreground and background colors to mid gray and black respectively, then go filter > render > clouds
Then still on this layer go filter > noise >add noise and add noise of 4% with a gaussian distribution and tick monochromatic

Finally set this new layer to overlay with an opacity of 70%

Step 4

Create the shape of the number 2 on a new layer.

You can use one of your pre-installed fonts, however if you don’t think you’ve got the right font, draw your own using the pen tool. For the shape below I used franklin gothic font set to 800 px in size. Then converted the text into a path, and modified the individual points using the direct selection tool to a shape I was happy with. Next, I turned the path into a live selection. Lastly I filled that selection with the color black in a new layer.

Add inner and outer glows using layer styles to the number 2 (double click on the layer in the layer panel).

Outer glow settings:

inner glow settings:

Step 5

Using a white brush tool with 0% hardness paint strokes around the edges of the 2 on several new layers. Try experimenting with the smudge tool as well to push the paint around a bit.

Now set each highlight layer to overlay and experiment with the opacity levels to achieve a look similar to that below. For a slight color alteration I added a pale orange color overlay in layer styles to each layer.

Step 6

Create some funky lines to the rop right of the 2 on a new layer. To create these lines I used a brush set called winter breeze which you can find in the previous post 10 Groovy Brushes for Photoshop

Then create a layer mask for the new layer to hide the new lines which are visible over the 2 itself. Finally, in layer styles set a color overlay to yellow and an inner glow of mid orange and experiment with the choke and size settings to produce something like below:

Step 7

Now the final step, create a new layer yet again, fill it with black and go filter > render > lens flare and accept the default settings. Move the lens flare to an appropriate position then set the blend mode to linear dodge.

And that’s it. Below are links to the .psd file and the winter breeze brush. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If you have any questions, write a comment below and i’ll reply.

PSD File

Winter Breeze Brush Set

Step 1: open any photograph on your Photoshop Canvas containing any water body such as sea or a photo of a lake.

Step 2: Next make a duplicate copy of the background; we will make a duplicate copy so that if we make any mistake while doing this then we have some thing to start a fresh from and secondly the Background Layer is locked so we cannot make any manipulations in this layer.

Step 3: Select the Text Tool from the Tool bar as shownunder.

Step 4: Type any text over the water body in the Photograph.

Step 5: Select the Rasterize Type option as shown under by right clicking on the Text Layer in the Palette.

Step 6: Make a copy of the Text Layer as done in Step 2.

Step 7: Select the Text Copy Layer and Select the Flip Vertical Option from the transform submenu in the Edit Menu to make a vertically inverse copy of this text.

Step 8: Now we will merge the copy of the text with the water by selecting the Distort option from the Transform submenu in the Edit Menu and then decreasing the height of the copy.

Step 9: We will now add Ripple to the reflection of the text to make it look original.

Set the Amount to 290% in the Ripple Dialog Box.

Step 10: Select the Motion Blur option from the Filter Menu and blur the reflection by some amount.

Set the Distance to 15 pixels and the angle to 2 degree in the dialog box.

Step 11: Decrease the Opacity to give the reflection a realistic look.

The Final outcome is given below.