Grunge Textures

I am a big advocate of using photographic images as only a jumping off point when creating your own textures. Grabbing something off the web can sometime bare fruit, but too often the texture is the wrong resolution, the wrong size, or the wrong color. To avoid this problem, and give yourself more control over your final textures, I like to create Grunge Textures as the base for creating original textures from scratch.

Basically, a Grunge Texture is an organic looking stain, wood grain, rust, or cracked surface image that you layer over your base texture. I have a growing collection of these in my own library and most of these started as images I found on the web. To create a Grunge Texture I start by finding a dirty, patina covered surface, usually without any hint of shadow or noticeable light source. I then completely de-saturate the image until it is completely black and white. I then lighten this texture and save it to one side (see above example).

Several Grunge Textures can be stacked up to create a more complex surface while still retaining control over the texture's color and dimensions. In this example I have started with:

1. A wood grain texture that I have made into a black & white Grunge Texture.

2. Next, I take a flat base color and on a second layer I draw several vertical lines to suggest separations in the wooden boards or planks. To do this I apply an Outer Bevel, Depth 50%, Size 6px., Highlight Mode Vivid Light 100%, and Overlay Shadow 85%.

3. I apply the wood grain as a Multiply Layer at 75%

4. I then take the second Grunge Layer (example at top of article)

5. and I apply it to the entire texture as a Multiply Layer at 60%

Although I could have gotten away with only using the wood grain texture, the second Grunge Texture acts as additional aging, as though the wood has become spotted and stained over time. This method allows me to easily change the color of the wood just by changing the brown base color to anything I like. It is worth mentioning that it is easy to get a little heavy handed with all of these dark layers, so I suggest you play with the opacity and contrast of your Grunge textures to find that perfect balance.

Note: If you plan to tile your finished texture, be sure that your Grunge Textures are tile-able as well, or else you will be able to see the edges of your texture as it repeats. More on Tiling soon.

If you would like a look at the original .PSD file for the example texture, you can find it here.