Tutorial: The Worn/Weathered/Stamped Look
There are quite a few quality stamped or distressed fonts available — Frankie and Frankie Dos, Roadkill, Battery Park, Hawksmoor, Chase, Coldharbour, Despatxada, FF Stamp Gothic, FF Confidential, FF Bull, Elephantmen to name but a few. Unfortunately ready-made stamp fonts present a number of drawbacks: repeating characters are identical (unless you have alternate glyphs), and the amount of detail is limited due to restrictions in the possible number of Bézier anchor points per glyph. To remedy this I developed a trick in Adobe Photoshop for distressing type. This technique allows you to apply a convincing stamped or weathered look to any typeface.
Create whatever type composition you need in Adobe Illustrator or directly in Photoshop. Just remember to keep the resolution fairly low, because we’re going to need pixel texture halfway through. I created this example in Illustrator using Tasse Black Extended at 96pt/72pt and opened it in Photoshop as a grayscale image at 72 ppi.
Select the black type areas with the magic wand or by using an alpha channel based on your composition. (Duplicate channel…: Black: invert -> Select…: Load selection: Black copy: new selection) This prevents you from mucking up the white background.
Apply a High Pass to “eat away” the insides of the characters (Filter: Other: High Pass…) Play a bit with the slider: for the example I set the Radius to 10 pixels and applied it twice.
Apply a fair amount of Gaussian noise to achieve the “grainy” texture. (Filter: Noise: Add Noise…: Gaussian) For the example the slider was set to an amount of 15.
Deselect.
Increase the resolution by resampling. (Image: Image size…: resample image) I doubled the resolution from 72ppi to 144ppi.
Diffuse the image to mask remaining bitmapping of the character shapes (Filter: Stylize: Diffuse…).
Increase to the desired resolution by resampling. (Image: Image size…: resample image) I doubled the resolution from 144ppi to 288ppi.
Apply a Gaussian blur of 1 pixel to remove the tiny pixels created by the Diffuse filter. (Filter: Blur: Gaussian Blur…)
Increase the Brightness and Contrast until you reach the desired amount of “inking”. (Image: Adjustments: Brightness/Contrast…) I set both sliders to +50. As the High Pass filter we applied at the very beginning primarily affects areas with substantial volume, I did a partial selection of the border and applied a higher amount of contrast (+75) to bring out more noise.
& Contrast brings out the texture" />
Threshold the image to prepare for conversion to a bitmap image. Here you can also play a bit with the slider until you reach the desired amount of “inking”. (Image: Adjustments: Treshold…) I set the slider at 96.
Here’s what it looks like from up close: the effect is perfectly random.
Convert to a bitmap image (Image: Mode: Bitmap…: 50% treshold), save as TIFF and import in your lay-out software of choice. You now have a compact sized graphic with transparent background that can be coloured and overlaid on any element in your design. Et voilà , you’ve just used $3,000 worth of computer equipment to emulate the look of a $3 rubber stamp.
The beauty of this technique is that at every step you can vary the settings, thus achieving different textures, and different amounts of wearing and inking. Remember that the initial resolution of the Photoshop type composition is crucial in relation to the crudeness of the end result, so experiment a lot until you get the desired result. Have fun.
ShareThis21 Comments:
Thanks for sharing the technique Yves. I particularly like “$3,000 worth of computer equipment to emulate the look of a $3 rubber stamp”!
For some time I had been telling people to use analogue techniques like smeared paint, scratched out toner, and crumpled laserprints (‘scrunching’) and then to scan the results at 300dpi or better. This was in preference to the technique Adobe called ‘Creating a rustic or eroded effect’ on type (p.76 ‘Design Essentials’ Adobe Press 1992) using PhotoShop 2.0’s diffuse filter. I guess insisting on the idea that Photoshop should never be used for setting type — even display type — is just old dogma now.
Yves, you have shown us another reason to be open about working outside our comfort zones and remaining open to possibilities.
This is a fine technique to enhance creativity and production. Great article. Thanks.
Mabuhay, Yves!
In a serendipititious run of luck, I came across your tip while I was wracking my brains in search of a PhotoShop technique of “aging” fonts. Because of you, I now have a book cover about a manuscript written by a Filipino some 200 years ago — with the appropriate effects on the title text.
Thanks.
Glad it was helpful, Dan. If you get a chance, please post or send us a snapshot of your cover.
Great tutorial… any thoughts or tips on how this might work with a t-shirt design?
Thanks, this was perfect and easy! I’m sure it will be my new favorite! On some things, the HIGH PASS didn’t work well, so I substituted with ‘render clouds’ to achieve the grayscale variation. I love the final result! :)
Interesting. Never thought of going about it that way. I use this effect relatively often, but resort to scanning in photocopied black pages, playing with the levels for some grainy high contrast, and then screening the result on top of the type.
I think I’d still prefer my method, as it’s more organic, but I can definately see use for this method should lack of time or photocopiers and scanners present itself.
> On some things, the HIGH PASS didn’t work well, so I substituted with ‘render clouds’ to achieve the grayscale variation.
What I didn’t tell was that I developed this little trick some 10 years ago, when you still needed a significant mass of water drops suspended in the sky to “Render Clouds”. ;^)
Consider this as a starting point and improve on the technique — I will definitely try out your variation. The main advantage of the High Pass filter is that it erodes more the inside of the shapes, which is very similar to what happens with stamped letters in real life .
In answer to Stephen Coles’ query above, check out these plugin filters for PS:
http://www.mrretro.com/machine_wash_filters_three.html
They look like a good buy, if you don’t mind the fact that someone else’s hard work makes your designs look good!
This is fascinating, especially Cameron Moll’s “Wicked worn look.” I have been seeing a lot of this type of treatment, especially in New Americana Music design…it seems to be a code for Rough Authenticity.
I still print things out and mash them about on a photocopier…but I will certainly give this technique a try!
i had to bookmark this one. thnx yves!
I like the comment about the $3000 worth of computer equipment to make the work of a $3 rubber stamp…
Wow that is very impressive! I am a rubberstamper and my daughter often tries to make stamping and scrapbooking effects in her computer. Im going to forward this on!
Good tips. Fun to take the end result into Illustrator and play with livetrace. Right on!
very cool, very usefull.
Hey! Another use for the Highpass filter. I was doing lots of alpha channel stuff to do that part of the preparations. Thanks for that!
Hey
Great tut with great effect
Only thing I can’t figure out how you say it’s transparent?
When I start i have the text and white bg on one layer
how do you get the white to be transparent at the end?
Please help.
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Wow, this is brilliant. I’ve been doing things like this with fonts for ages but this is the best technical explanation I’ve seen on how to reproduce this effect. Mine is usually more random experimentation to create a similar effect.
Excellent.