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.

very cool….

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/​m​a​c​h​i​n​e​_​w​a​s​h​_​f​i​l​t​e​r​s​_​t​h​r​e​e​.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…

Looks great, best part is, is it doesn’t look fake.

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.

A 1 bit TIFF is trans­parent and can be coloured in Adobe InDesign and Illus­trator, and QuarkX­Press. But really, we produce these tutorials, yet it’s up to you to know the possi­bil­ities of the software you use. We are no help desk, ;)

!SKILLS! thanks for imparting the wisdom. much appre­ciated.

Thanks Yves, very cool effect!

thank you for this!!
all other rubber stamp tutes are completely rubbish.

Peter, it looks like something has gotten garbled in this tute. There is a pice of a sentence (& Contrast brings out the texture” />) just hanging onto the graphic that is just above the paragraph that begins, “Threshold the image…”

Can you rectify this for us? Is it part of an instruction needed to complete this tute, or is it extrainious matter?

Thank you for all your grat tutes.

I am sorry but I am not very much impressed with the final result. I have seen some other tutorials for “Stamped Look” and they were OK but this one doesn’t look much like a “Stamp”.

I obviously can’t please everyone, but fortu­nately you have those other tutorials as a point of reference. Good for you. :)

This is a great tutorial, but it is really so much easier to make using Xara Xtreme. Just the text tool, rectangle tool and a fractal plasma trans­parency with a profile of -0.48 and -1. The advantage is it is a vector. You can also export it as a .png file with alpha to preserve the trans­parency.

hey yves, very nice tute, i’ll have to try it out!

the only things i’d suggest is that ‘now’ (3 years on) Adobe Illus­trator is much better at vectorising bitmaps, so you couls take the 1-bit tiff and turn it into a vector pretty much with 1 click.

thanks again :-)

Nice and easy. Just they way I like it.
Thanks for sharing this helpful technique.