Grunge Text Photoshop Tutorial

With my last Photoshop Tutorial I showed you the technique I use to blend text on textured surfaces, using displacement maps. With this tutorial I am going to show you how you can create grungy text using displacement maps, an almost similar technique.

Let’s start by creating a displacement map. (You can skip these steps and use a grungy displacement map if you already have one)

1. Create a new document, for this tutorial I created a 640*480 pixels document, press D to reset the colors palette and go to Filter->Render->Clouds

grunge text photoshop tutorial clouds step

2. Now we are going to add some noise. Go to Filter-> Noise -> Add noise and use these settings

grunge text photoshop tutorial noise settings

3. Go to Filter-> Noise -> Median and use these settings.

grunge text photoshop tutorial median settings

4. Next we are going to sharpen a bit our displacement map. To do this we are going to apply the Unsharp Mask filter. Go to Filter-> Sharpen -> Unsharp Mask and use this settings.

grunge text photoshop tutorial unsharp mask settings

5. Finally, we are going to add some texture to our displacement map. To achieve this we are going to apply a lighting effect. Go to Filter -> Render -> Lighting Effects and use this settings.

grunge text photoshop tutorial lightning effects settings

Note that I have used a Texture Channel (you can see that at the bottom of the previous screenshot)
So here is our final Displacement map. (If you already have some grungy, textured displacement maps there is no need to create one using this technique you can use the ones you already have)

grunge text photoshop tutorial displacement map

Save it as a .psd file with a name that you will remember

About Dimitris

My name is Dimitris and I am from Greece. I created this blog as a learning tool for Photoshop both for other but for me as well. I am definitely no Photoshop Guru or a professional graphic designer, I am just an amateur trying to learn as much as I can about Photoshop.

5 Responses to Grunge Text Photoshop Tutorial

  1. Fizzled Drink February 20, 2006 at 4:44 am #

    Nice tut, works good for me.

  2. Intel17 March 5, 2006 at 7:02 am #

    Nice tut, It works really well
    Good Job

  3. SAID May 4, 2006 at 3:43 pm #

    BONNE CHANCE

  4. Teri June 4, 2006 at 3:51 pm #

    Totally superb. Works excellent!
    Cheers

  5. Chelsea June 16, 2006 at 12:43 am #

    Great tutorial. It works great for my graphic.