Photoshop: Smells Like Grunge

No, we’re not talking about the early 90′s music movement. We’re talking about the “Grunge” effect that we are all so in love with these days. In this tutorial we’re going to discuss how and where to not only use the grunge effect but also learn how to make our own grunge brushes for re-use in all of our projects.

Lets start by showing you what grunge is typically used for in graphic design:

Before:After:Note: Click to enlarge

This effect is very easy to do. Infact, it took me all of about 3 minutes to do using brushes. Sure, there are a lot of grunge brushes out there to for free download and use, but creating organic graphics is by far the best practice. So, we are going to first learn how to make our own Grunge Brushes. So lets begin!First off, you’re going to need to find a texture from a photo you own, or one on the web. If you are gung-ho about doing this without using anything from the internet then i suggest taking your digital camera and taking photos of sides of buildings and concrete… the dirtier the better. If you dont have the time or are just lazy, finding photos to use online is simple and easy (and we’re not going to copy them so it’s okay). Try some of these sites:

• Mayang’s Free Texture Library
• TextureKing
• Texture Library
• Texture Warehouse

Pick one with a lot of dirt or corrosion. Now we are going to have to adjust the image most likely to get rid of some color and bring out the “grunge” in it. Follow these steps….

Open up the image photoshop:

Go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate (or: Ctrl + Shift + U). Depending on the outcome, you probably have to adjust the levels by going to
Image > Adjustments > Levels (or: Ctrl + L). You’re going to want something more or less like this: Now with the image desaturated and the levels adjusted your going to single out the part(s) of the image you want to make into a grunge brush. You can use any variation of your selection tools from circle to lasso. Once you’ve roughly gotten the part you want, copy and paste into a new image. Now with your new image your going to clean up the corners so that the grunge spot is smooth with no squares cut out of it. You can do this by either by using the Eraser tool (E), and smoothing out the edges or just filling in the spots with white. Note that this step is sometimes not needed… and easy way is to just fill out parts with the paint bucket to white and you will probably get rid of a lot of jagged edges from your selecting.Anyway, you should have something more or less along the lines of this: Now with that, your going to make it into a brush. First off, if your going to make this in your own set or redistribute it on the internet then your going to have to take a few small steps before adding this as a brush…

• Go to Edit > Preset Manager
• Highlight Brushes in the drop down menu
• Hit Ctrl + A to select all
• Select ‘Delete’ (This WILL NOT permanently delete any brushes!)
• Close the Preset Manager

Now we have a blank slate to add our brushes and make them into a set. Now with your grunge selected, go to Edit > Define Brush Preset. Now name it whatever you like and click ok. Thats it! You have your first grunge brush. Repeat this as many times with different selections to create a whole set. When your done however, make sure you open up your brushes and save them to their own .ABR file. You can do this by going back to the preset manager (Edit > Preset Manager) and highlighting them all and clicking ‘Save Set…’

Easy enough huh? Now open up your favorite piece (or make a new one) and start adding grunge. You can either go around the edges or add it everywhere to your photo. But wait! Theres a lot more you can do with it!

Heres a couple ways grunge can be used other then dirtying up that picture of your cat.

One cool effect of grunge is to add a sense of ‘decay’ to a picture or more specifically a picture of a persons face. This is accomplished by either finding a photo online (search for “dry dirt”) and simply “overlaying” it on top of the photo. This is done by by opening up the original photo, then pasting the texture on top of that layer and selecting the “overlay” option on the layer. Then using the eraser tool to go around the persons face… chances are you have something eerie. Just tweak it over and over till you have it right… thats all you have to do, you should get something like this.

Another thing is to single out one part of an image with surrounding grunge and effects. Similar to this.

There are a lot of cool things you can do with grunge… my best advice is to just practice.