Photoshop Scratchy Tutorial

Photoshop Scratchy Tutorial - The Steps

• Photoshop Scratchy Tutorial:Before you start off - please be aware that your texture won’t turn out exactly the same, the white scratchy bits will be in different places and scattered differently, but it will still turn out to have the same look as mine does.
• To start off, you need a plain 800×600 black image. To do so, go into File -> New… A box should pop up, change all your settings to match mine, click here

• Now you need to fill your image with a solid black colour, so go into Layer -> New Fill Layer -> Solid Colour. Select the colour black, click OK. Then merge your layers by going into Layer -> Merge Visible.

• Now you need to save this image to your Desktop, right click and select Save image as… Then go into Photoshop and open it up. Now click on the image you’ve just opened up and on your keyboard hold down the CTRL button (Or Apple button for mac users), once you’re holding down the CTRL/Apple Button, hold down the letter A on your keyboard. Your image should now be selected.

• Now you need to define the image you selected as a pattern, so go into Edit -> Define Pattern… Click OK.

• Download These Brushes, but if you don’t have Photoshop CS2/3, download the stamps here, then convert the stamps into brushes. Once that’s done, if you downloaded the brushes and not the stamps, continue loading the brushes into photoshop, if not, skip the the rest of this step. Go back into Photoshop and go into Edit -> Preset Manager… Click on the drop-down menu where it says Preset Type. When the drop down menu appears, click on brushes. Now click ‘Load…’ and select the brushes you just downloaded. Click OK.

• Now go back to your plain black image by clicking on it. Click on the Brush Tool, once you’ve clicked that find the brush settings button, click here for a screen shot. When that box appears change all of your settings to match mine, make sure you have the same ones ticked too. click here for my brush settings.

• Before adding brushes in the next step, you should know that… If when adding the brushes, there’s something you don’t like, simply hold down the CTRL or Apple button, then hold down the Z button on your keyboard to undo it.

• Now comes the fun part. Click the brush tool and select the default 1px brush, it should be at the top of your brush list. Make sure all the brushes you use in this texture is white, you may change the colour if you like, but if you want my personal opinion, white looks best. Make sure the texture box is still ticked in your brush settings, make sure your other settings are as they should be too. Scatter the 1px brush around your black image, you should end up with white dots scattered everywhere, this is your base of your scratchy texture.

• Once that’s done, go into your brushes and select one of the brushes you recently downloaded in this tutorial. Scatter one of them in a few places, careful not to make the brush too heavy and don’t hold it down for too long, otherwise you might end up with white splodges, which isn’t what we’re aiming for. For some of the brushes you may just need to click, for others you might need to click and then hold it, whilest moving your brush around a little, fiddle a bit, you’ll work out what looks best. Once you’ve had enough of the brush you’re using now, move onto the next and custimize your texture with the brushes, always making sure that your brush settings are as they shoulod be, like in the screen shot I showed you above.

• Once you’ve done that, if you don’t feel it’s finished just yet, feel free to change your brush to a 1px white default photoshop brush again, that might add a bit of something.

• And you’re pretty much done. If you want to make more textures like these with different brushes, you can go onto our brushes page and download some sets of brushes. Not all of them work properly for these type of textures, but now that you know what to do - I’ll leave you to play with it.

• I hope this tutorial was helpful and made sense - if you do have any questions regarding this Photoshop Scratchy Tutorial then feel free to leave a comment below and we’ll do our best to help you.