Today I'm going to show you a useful technique for applying a design to a textured background,
such as wood.
This is great for creating rustic wooden signs, or any other effect where your design looks
I'm using this free image of a Wood Board Structure to create a wooden sign.
The colours are little too rich, so a quick Hue/Saturation adjustment layer helps to bring
down the saturation slightly.
We also need some artwork to place upon the texture, so I'll quickly take you through
the process of creating my Farm Fresh design.
You could also paste in your logo art, a lettering design or any other imagery.
Grab the Type tool and enter the word Farm.
I'm using this nice typeface named Gastromond from the Adobe Fonts Library.
Activate it for use Photoshop using the link in the description.
Give the text a white fill and scale it up in size to fill the left half of the canvas.
Switch back to the Move tool to make a duplicate of the text element.
Hold the ALT key while dragging it to make a copy, then double click to edit the wording
to Fresh.
Line up the text on the left side, then press CMD (or the CTRL key on Windows) +T shortcut
for Transform.
Scale the text to the same width as the word Farm.
Make another copy of the text element and edit the wording to Eggs.
For this word I'm using the font named Corner Store, also from the Adobe Fonts Library.
This script font doesn't have any clear edges to line up, so instead optically scale it
so it looks the right size.
While transforming, right click and choose Skew, then drag the right handle upwards to
give the script a rise effect.
Shift and click all the text elements in the Layer stack, then press CMD+T to move and
scale them into place within the canvas.
To complement this artwork theme, I have some ready-made vector graphics of various farm
animals available to download from Spoon Graphics.
Open the Meat Cut Illustrations file in Adobe Illustrator.
Make a copy of the Chicken, then right click and choose Ungroup.
We don't need the various meat cut text elements, so select them all and hit Delete.
The same goes with the dotted lines.
With just the main body silhouette left, clear out the stroke and swap the black fill to
white.
Copy this graphic, then switch back over to Photoshop and hit CMD+V to Paste.
Select Pixels, then hit Enter.
Scale this graphic up in size and position it to fill out the remaining space in the
composition.
To finish off this design, add a new layer, then use the Elliptical marquee tool to draw
an egg shape.
Use the ALT+Backspace shortcut to fill the selection with the current foreground colour,
which should still be white from setting up the text.
Use the CMD+T Transform shortcut to rotate the egg, hit Enter to apply, then ALT+Drag
with the Move tool to make a copy.
Rotate this duplicate into a different orientation with the CMD+T shortcut, then repeat with
a third egg.
Hold Shift and select all the layers that make up the design, then hit CMD+G to create
a Group.
Before adding some texturing to the artwork, let's first eliminate the crisp digital appearance
to try and give it more of a hand-made look.
Right click on the Group and choose Convert to Smart Object.
Go to Filter > Distort > Ripple.
Change the Size to Large, then small amount of distortion between 10-20%.
Turn off the visibility of the artwork group, leaving just the original texture.
Switch over to the Channels panel, then hold the CMD key and click the thumbnail of one
of the channels.
Usually the Blue channel has the most contrast.
Swap back to the Layers panel and bring back the artwork.
Add a Layer mask to this group while the selection is active to automatically fill it with the
texture.
Depending on the brightness of your texture image it might be necessary to hit CMD+I to
invert the mask.
This current mask is fading the artwork too much, so while the mask thumbnail is selected,
hit CMD+L to bring up the Levels.
Move the sliders back and forth to adjust the appearance of the mask.
The darker the shadows, the more they will erase the artwork, the lighter the highlights,
the more the artwork will be preserved.
Aim for high contrast so the artwork still has a bright white fill, but the details of
the texture erase it in the roughest areas.
There's another filter that can really help to boost the realism to make it seem like
the artwork is really painted onto the texture.
Turn off the visibility of the artwork again.
Go to Select > All, followed by Edit > Copy Merged.
Create a new document and paste in the texture.
Go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate, then go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur
This image will be used as a displacement map, so adding a small amount of blur helps
to distort the artwork smoothly without any jagged edges.
Find a small amount that just takes the hard edges away from the texture.
Go to File > Save As and save this file as a PSD with a recognisable name.
Close the image to return back to the main document.
Bring back the visibility of the artwork again, then make sure you select the group and not
the group's mask, otherwise the effect will be applied to the Layer Mask which is currently
selected.
Go to Filter > Distort > Displace.
Hit Enter on the default values, then navigate to the displacement map file we just made.
This Displacement filter subtly distorts the artwork around the bumps and contours of the
texture.
The final result is a realistic wooden sign effect where the artwork is worn away wherever
there's cracks or dirt within the texture.
The addition of those two extra Photoshop filters also help to enhance the hand-made
look by making it seem like the design has been physically painted on to the surface.
This tutorial focused on using a wooden texture, but you can also use the same technique to
apply your designs to rusty metal, brick walls, concrete or any other grungy material.
If you enjoyed this tutorial or learnt any new tricks a thumbs up to help spread the
word would be really appreciated.
Subscribe to my channel to see more of my video tutorials, and join my mailing list
at Spoon Graphics to download more of my free design resources.
As always thank you very much for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.