Adding Stock Textures to Images for extra ‘Oomph’

In this little Photoshop tutorial we’ll be designing a quick art piece, then we’ll be adding some texture to it, this is to demonstrate the use of texture in artwork.

The Final Image would be look like :

1. Background Creation

Let’s start with a new document. For this Photoshop tutorial I’m using a rather puny size of 800 x 600 pixels, feel free to use a larger size though. I left the Resolution at it’s default as well, 72. I did however use CMYK color (default is RGB) for this tutorial, not sure why, but if you want the same result as mine you’ll want to change this setting.

After we’ve created our document, we want to make a nice basic background. Start by getting out the Gradient Tool, and setting up your settings similar to mine:

The colors I’ve got set for my gradient in the above image are #010001 and #0d6c65. To make things easier now, you might want to set up some rulers in the center of your document. Press ctrl+r to enable rulers, then drag some onto your canvas, like so:

Now drag your radial gradient into the middle of the canvas, obviously having the lighter color in the middle.

Next we’ll add a cool starburst effect to the background. Get out the Custom Shape Tool from the Photoshop tools and find the starburst shape, drag it onto your canvas like I’ve done in the below screenshot:

Note that the color I’m using for my starburst shape is the same as the green that I used for my background. After you’ve done all this, mess around with the layer mode and opacity for your starburst layer. I used the layer mode Color Burn and lowered the opacity to 20-30%.

2. Add your Mascot

If your mascot/whatever is as bright as mine you’ll definitely want to darken it up a little bit by using Levels (ctrl+l) and maybe even Hue/Saturation (ctrl+u).

Be sure to mess around with different settings until you get a nice effect. After you’re happy with the color adjustments, apply an Outer Glow and Gradient Overlay layer style with the settings shown below.

Now you should have something like this (left side, obviously):

3. Add Text

Start by getting out the Horizontal Type Tool and writing out some text, for this example I used the text ‘Grrr!!’.It’s best if you use a very fat fat, sans-serif font. Arial Black might be a good option.

After you’ve written out your text onto the canvas, and you’re happy with it, distort it by clicking the little icon near the top settings, it’s called ‘create warped text’.

After you’re all done with this, change the text’s color to a green color, similar or the same as what you used in the original background gradient. After this, I finished off by applying three layer styles:

• Inner Shadow
• Color Overlay
• Gradient Overlay

Now we’ve got this:

You could finish here, or we could continue a little further and add a kind of 3D effect to the text by adding a solid drop shadow. Do this by holding your alt key down on your keyboard, then using the arrow keys to move and duplicate your text layer.

Do this as many times as it takes, then merge all of the text layers together. After merging all of your text layer duplicates together, move them underneath the original text layer. Now fill the solid drop shadow layer with a dark color of your choice (here’s to hoping I just made sense).

4. Add Textures & Adjustments

Here is a short list that I’ve composed of good texture resources. The bold links are my favorites.

• deviantART Resources
• BittBox
• Urban Dirty
• TextureKing
• Pixel Perfect Digital
• StockVault
• Got3D Free Textures

Pick out a few nice, different textures then open them in Photoshop. After you’ve got them open, copy them one by one and paste them to your other document. Now you can resize them down to a reasonable size. For most of them I just resized them down to the document size.
Here you can download the two exact textures that I used:

• Dirty/Slimy Concrete
• Rocky Loam Walls

Download the two I used if you like and copy them onto your document. Start with the dirty/slimy concrete texture, put it just above your starburst layer and start messing with the layer modes and opacity. I ended up using the layer mode Multiply, with a very low opacity (10-15%).

Finally:

Credit: photoshopstar