Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
I'm going to show you a super-fast way to make your graphics and text look realistically
eroded and weathered.
This effect can be applied to any distressed surface.
For this example, I provided a rusty, painted metal texture that you can download.
You can use it or or your texture.
Its link is in my video's description below or project files.
You can either type out text over the texture or open a graphic.
If the graphic is on a background or color, we need to separate it by making a selection
around the graphic.
There are many ways to do this, but since this background is pure white, I'll use my Magic Wand Tool.
If you're using this tool, as well, make sure "Contiguous" is checked and click anywhere outside your graphic.
After you make the selection, to check it, press "Q" on your keyboard to see it as a quick mask.
Press "Q" again to revert it back into a selection.
Click the lock icon to unlock the layer and press the "Delete" key to delete the background.
To deselect it, press Ctrl or Cmd + D. To place it onto the background texture, press
"v" to open your "Move Tool" and drag your graphic onto the tab of the texture.
Without releasing your mouse or pen, drag it down and release.
To resize and position it, open your Transform Tool by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + T.
If the Transform's bounding box extends beyond your visible canvas, press Ctrl or Cmd + 0.
Go to a corner and when you see a diagonal, double-arrow, press and hold Alt or Option
+ Shift as you drag it in or out.
To reposition it, go inside the bounding box and drag it.
Then, press Enter or Return and fit it back onto your canvas.
Hide the graphic and make the background active.
Open the Channels panel.
If you don't see it, go to Window and Channels.
We want to find the channel that has the most contrast,
so we'll click on each channel to compare them.
This is the Red channel...the Green channel...and the Blue channel.
Keep in mind, since each image has its own colors and characteristics, the contrast of
the channels may vary dramatically from one photo to the other.
Since this particular photo has a lot of red it in, the red channel has the most contrast.
Once you pick the channel with the most contrast, drag it to the New Layer icon.
Immediately, a copy of that channel will appear below the others.
Next, we're going to increase the contrast even more.
To do this, open your Levels window by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + L.
Drag the Input Shadow slider to the right until most of the darkest tones are black.
Drag the Input Highlight slider to the left to brighten the lightest tones.
This step is probably the most important.
If we give it too much contrast, the subtleties of the texture won't pop through our graphic enough.
On the other hand, if we give it too little contrast, our graphic won't pop through the texture enough.
Experiment with the contrast until you have just the right balance.
Ctrl-click or Cmd-click its thumbnail to make a selection of all its tones.
Click the RGB channel to see all the colors of our image and open back the Layers panel.
Make the graphic visible and active.
Click the Layer Mask icon to make a layer mask of the selection next to the graphic.
Immediately, it makes our graphic look as if it weathered over time.
Think of layer masks as stencils - the white areas reveal our graphic through the layer
mask onto the textured background, while the black areas of the layer mask hide those areas of the graphic.
If you'd like to desaturate the colors of the graphic a bit,
click the Adjustment layer icon and click, "Hue/Saturation".
Adjustment layers affect all the layers below them in the Layer panel, however, if we want
it to limit an adjustment layer to affect just one layer below it, we need to make the
adjustment layer into a Clipping Mask.
To do this, either click the Clipping Mask icon or press Ctrl + Alt + G on Windows or
Cmd + Option + G on a Mac.
You can also go to Layer and "Create Clipping Mask".
Drag the Saturation slider to the left just enough to desaturate the colors.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
Thanks for watching!