There are several ways to add texturing to your logo artwork in Photoshop,
you could apply textures using brushes, add a texture image to a layer mask,
apply a texture with a clipping mask, or even using a pattern overlay.
All methods have their benefits, but my favourite technique is what I call the knockout method.
Using this technique to apply textures to your logos means you can easily layer
up multiple textures non-destructively without it being permanently applied,
so you can still edit and change the artwork if necessary.
To use the knockout method, you have to make sure your textures have a transparent
background. There are plenty of texture packs out there that are supplied as PNGs,
I'll link to some of the best down in the description,
but first I'll show you how to convert any regular texture into a suitable graphic.
Here I'm using my Subtle Grunge Concrete Textures,
which you can download for free from my Spoon Graphics website.
Add a Black and White adjustment layer, then a Levels adjustment layer.
Drag the shadows and highlights sliders inwards to max out the contrast, effectively making a
threshold style appearance where you just have the black texturing on a white background.
Head over to the Channels panel and hold the CMD key (or CTRL key
on Windows) and click the thumbnail of the RGB channel to load its selection.
Switch back to the Layers panel and create a new layer. Fill this selection using the
ALT+Backspace shortcut. You'll find the selection is the wrong way around,
so Undo and go to Select > Inverse, then fill with ALT+Backspace.
Turn off the visibility of the other layers to see the texture now has a transparent background.
This texture is ready to be used with the knockout method,
so go to Select > All and Edit > Copy, then return to your main logo document.
Go to Edit > Paste to insert this texture onto a new layer.
Double click the texture layer to open the
Layer Style options and choose Shallow from the Knockout menu.
Reduce the layer's Fill to zero to see the texture is punching out the logo layer below it,
allowing the white background to show through the tiny details of the texture.
What's great about this knockout method is it's easy to layer up several textures,
so you can build up just the right amount of detail,
or simply toggle them all on and off to find the best one.
Open up another Subtle Grunge Concrete Texture and add it to
the bottom of the layer stack in the temporary texture processing document.
Turn back on the adjustment layers, but turn off the previously create texture.
Follow the same process of copying the selection of the RGB channel.
Paste this second texture onto the logo art too and give it the same
knockout setting in the layer styles window along with a Fill of zero.
The textured portion of the logo is transparent,
so whatever colour the background layer, it will show through.
You can see this logo graphic actually has some white fill shapes, but if you go to the layer
styles window and move the Blend If slider, it will make the white areas transparent.
Convert this layer into a Smart Object and I'll show you some useful tips to add
cool letterpress stamp effects to your artwork.
Duplicate the logo layer and move it to the
top of the layer stack. Then reduce its Fill value to zero.
In the Layer Styles window, add an Inner Glow. The default settings are good enough,
but I use a Choke of 70 and Size of 20.
This simple outlining effect helps to replicate the appearance of a real stamp.
A real ink stamp would also have slightly distorted edges,
rather than crisp straight outlines. Go to Filter > Distort > Ripple and choose
Large with an amount of around 20% to add some subtle irregularities to the edges.
You can easily change the colour of your artwork even with this texturing applied by adding a Sold
Color adjustment layer, but if you try adding it directly to the layer stack it won't work.
First you need to Group everything, then apply the Sold Color adjustment layer to the Group.
Because we contained the logo within a Smart Object,
the original graphic is preserved, so it can be easily edited or updated.
Double click any of the the Smart Object thumbnails – they're both linked to the same file.
You can modify the canvas size to suit if necessary, then paste in your new logo art.
Once the Smart Object file has been saved and closed, you can see the
main document has been updated with the same texturing effects applied to the new logo.
It's this exact method that I used to create my Ink Stamp Texturizer resource,
which you can pick up from Spoon Graphics.
It allows you to paste in your logos and graphics to have up to 10 pre-installed
textures instantly applied to your artwork, without the need to process the textures first.
Follow the link in the description to check it out!