Advanced Grunge Techniques | Photoshop Tutorial for Text & Logos

hey everyone brady from texture labs here and in this tutorial i want to do something a little bit different and rather than aiming for a specific look i want to share with you guys some techniques that i've landed on after working for years in photoshop some techniques for using textures in kind of a totally different way so i've got this super distressed looking typography here and you could certainly follow along with this video to get this exact look but the journey is really the destination here and if you're into distressing things type or logos if you like using grunge and textures in your work then i think this will be really interesting just a little teaser let me point out that in this entire composition with all the grunge and transparency there's not a single layer mask so how is that working well come along and bend your brain a little bit i'll just note that if you're brand new to photoshop this may not be the best place to start i'll probably move a little bit faster and i'm going to assume a basic knowledge of masks and clipping masks so if you're just getting started with those i'll link to a video that may be a better place to start all right enough with the intros let's get into this thing and i'll show you what i'm talking about [Music] all right i'm actually going to get started a little different than usual this time rather than starting totally from scratch you can see here i have a very simple photoshop document open resolution is 4k or 3840 by 2160 and i have three layers here all live type different fonts and this will be the jumping off point and before i go any further i'm just going to drop a background in here let me grab this texture labs metal 142 and i will copy that paste it into the background and then maybe transform and scale it to be the size of my document then i'm actually going to unlock and delete the original background just to keep things nice and clean all right so what i'm looking to do here is just distress the hell out of this typography and it's three different fonts on three different layers but i want them all to have the same look and the same grunge so what i could do would be to merge all these into one layer but the alternative is to take all three of these layers and drag them into a group folder so i'll do that and just rename that type and i have to admit i worked for years in photoshop always thinking of group folders as just a tool that overly organized people use to keep a document tidy but it was a big turning point for me when i realized that using groups can open up all kinds of possibilities that just a stack of layers can't do and that'll become more apparent as i move along here so first of all with these type layers in a group i can think of this folder as just a single object i can change the blending mode or move it around as one object and i can also apply a mask to the group folder so i could take something like this grunge texture copy it then with the group folder selected hit the create mask button option click on the mask and paste the texture into the mask and now i have the same grungy mask applied to all three of the type layers i don't have to merge things i can keep the type live and i really like having that flexibility we've probably all been in the situation where you do a type lock up you go through this lengthy process of distressing it and comping it only to realize later that maybe one font isn't quite right or maybe you have a client that wants one little piece moved so the less destructive i can be along the way the better all right good to know you can create a mask for a group folder but i'm actually going to delete the mask that's not the technique i'm going to use today what i'm going to do is to hit command v to paste that texture again this time outside of the folder and on its own layer then i'm going to option click between the texture and the group folder to create a clipping mask which then of course just uses the texture as the fill color rather than for creating transparency but what i want to do here is a technique that's sort of a combination between a mask and a clipping mask so what i'm going to do is right click on the group folder and go to my blending options and then here in the blend if section and let me actually zoom in to illustrate this a little better if i drag the this layer black slider up what it's going to do is create transparency in the blacks and in the darkest areas right so what i'm going to do is bring that value back to 0 then i'm going to hold the option key and option drag the black all the way to the top which is effectively doing what a regular layer mask does it's creating transparency in the black then a smooth transition to fully opaque in the white values and it's a really nice effect that happens when both the fill color and the transparency are correlated in this way it's like the more weathered and darker this paint gets the more it gets worn away to being transparent so let me hit ok and i'll show you how we can build on this i'm going to select the texture and the folder and drag both of these into another group folder and this one i'll call masks and bear with me the reason for that will become apparent in a moment first i'm going to create a new layer fill it with white then option click to create a clipping mask with this layer and the masks folder so let me open these folders back up we can see how this is organized and at this point we're actually right back to the exact same effect as when i originally used that texture as a mask because this white solid is now filling everything in with white again this texture is effectively just being used as a mask so why bother setting it up like this rather than just using it as a mask in the first place well there's a couple of reasons number one you may have noticed that when you paste something into a mask in photoshop it deletes all the information outside the document boundaries which drives me insane because sometimes i like to have a big texture as a mask and be able to move it around and experiment with the placement of the texture but now this mask is actually a full size layer so i'm retaining all that information outside of the document boundaries okay another benefit is that i can use adjustment layers on the mask so as you know if you want to do a levels adjustment on a regular mask you can use image adjust levels and you basically get one shot at it once you apply that adjustment the extra detail and the texture is gone and there's no turning back however here i can create a levels adjustment layer and i need to include that in the clipping mask above the texture and now i have an eternally adjustable levels on the mask all right yet another benefit is that i can actually layer up the mask so maybe i will grab this sort of crack texture and copy that i can paste it in there include it in the clipping mask and actually i'll invert that then i can set this layer to multiply and basically i have a whole little mini composition here just to create the mask so while a normal layer mask is kind of the single one-dimensional attribute attached to a layer now i have multiple layers i have adjustment layers blending modes all to create a mask and if you're into distressing things you know that dialing in a good mask is like technique number one so being able to have this much control over it is incredibly liberating all right so i've got sort of the base layers the masks and the fill colors all separated let's check out what happens if i turn off this white fill layer so that the masks again are creating the fill color that's also a cool effect maybe i want to split the difference by turning that layer on and setting the opacity to 50 so now i'm getting half the color from the masks and half from the white fill it's really nice to be able to have distinct control over where you want to get your shapes where you want to get your transparency and where you want to get your color so let's say i wanted to include a specific element in a specific color what i would need to do is have the same element here in this base shape folder and up here in the color section so let me show you what i mean i'm going to option drag a copy of this arizona type layer all the way outside these folders to work on it for a second and why don't i go into my effects menu and create a drop shadow i'll set the blend mode to normal so it's just a solid shape and make it blue and then i will dial it in maybe offset it a bit something like that then i'm going to go to my blending options and turn the fill all the way down so it's just the blue shadow that's the thing i want and okay then what i can do is to put this back into the type folder so now it's part of the overall shape then i'll option drag a copy up on top and include it in the clipping mask so i'm getting the shape of it down here and the color up here basically anything up here will determine the final color of your layers so if i were to create a new layer include it in the clipping mask then i could take my brush tool and select maybe a yellow color and paint in wherever i want that color all right let me close up these folders and now if i want to blend the entire thing as one object this mask folder kind of includes it all so i could access my blending options for this folder and use blend if and the underlying layer slider to kind of blend it into the background a bit by option dragging this black level up something about like that and there we go so i've lost a bit of contrast along the way i'm going to create a levels adjustment layer over the entire image and dial it in to get more of a final look all right well that wraps it up kind of a totally different way to think about masks and i think opens up a lot of possibilities of what you can do with textures i hope at least a few people find this as interesting as i do if so please do hit that like button and let me know in the comments below you can of course find all the textures i'm using here and many many more at texturelabs.org thanks for watching and i will see you next time

Channel: Texturelabs

Views: 11,435

Keywords: photoshop tutorial, photoshop textures, photoshop tutorials, grunge text effect, photoshop grunge, photoshop distressed text, weathered text, weathered text effect, distressed text effect, photoshop grunge logo, photoshop cracked text, photoshop essentials text effects, adobe photoshop tutorial, grunge, photoshop advanced tutorial, photoshop masks, photoshop professional, photoshop mask tutorial, advanced photoshop, advanced photoshop techniques, textureguys

Id: Nd6o2cv2HVw

Length: 9min 49sec (589 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 10 2020