couple of emails recently from people who found one of my old tutorials on how to create

a letterpress effect useful, so I thought I'd use the topic for this week's video tutorial

to update the technique. What we're aiming for is to recreate the cool

vintage style stamped effect you often see on logos and typographic elements, which is

based on old printing techniques like letterpress or simple rubber stamps. The texturing from

a lack of ink or the excessive ink bleed was once seen as a flaw in the printing process,

but now they're super trendy characteristics that designers love to recreate to distress

and age their digital designs.

Today I'll show you some techniques to produce ink stamp or letterpress style effects in

both Photoshop and Illustrator. Both apps have their pros and cons; Photoshop is much

more powerful when it comes to working with textures, but the results will always be in

raster format. Whereas in Illustrator we can have our work in 100% vector, but the effect

isn't quite as good.

Let's start with the Photoshop technique. Open up your logo or typographic illustration

and apply a Layer Mask so we can non-destructively erase away portions of the design.

There's two techniques you can use; textures and brushes. Let's look at the texture option

first:

Copy a cool texture from the web, like this spray paint image from Texture Fabrik. ALT+click

the Layer Mask thumbnail in the Layers panel to modify its contents. Paste in the texture,

then go to Edit > Adjustments > Levels and move the sliders inwards to boost contrast.

Click on an empty area of the canvas to exit out of mask mode. Masks work by erasing the

black areas of the mask from the design, so you might have to press CMD+I to invert the

mask contents to get a better result.

Alternatively, you use Photoshop Brushes to manually apply the texturing. Download and

install a set of subtle noise brushes. I'm afraid I can't remember where these specific

brushes I'm using are from. The brush names don't offer any clues, but you can find some

good freebies on the web. Dab with the brush in the layer mask to apply

an even texture all over the logo.

Real ink stamps never have clean and crisp edges like our digital, the ink bleeds and

distorts the outline. We can replicate this is Photoshop with the Ripple filter.

First, turn the logo into a Smart Object by right clicking the layer and select Convert

to Smart Object. This will prevent the Ripple from being applied permanently, so you can

alter the settings or remove it altogether should you want to.

Go to Filter > Distort and select Ripple. Change the size to Large, then adjust the

percentage to apply a subtle outline distortion. 20-25% should do it.

The effect is looking good, but there's one extra step that helps achieve that realistic

stamped look. Adding a black inner glow will fade out the texturing around the edges, but

since we've already got a layer mask applied, we need to add this effect on a new layer,

otherwise the mask would erase away the glow effect too and it just wouldn't work.

Duplicate the logo layer, then delete the Layer Mask. Move the Fill slider to 0%, then

double click the layer to edit the Layer Styles. Add an Inner Glow effect and change the settings

to Normal, Black, 100% opacity, zero choke then alter the size to generate a subtle outline.

That wraps up the letterpress effect in Photoshop, so let's move on to Illustrator and see how

a similar effect can be created in vector format. You can then choose the one that best

suits the project you're working on.

There's two ways to add the texture in Illustrator; using masks, or permanently with the Pathfinder.

Let's cover the mask technique first, which is essentially the same process as Photoshop,

but with different menu names.

Open the Transparency panel and click the Make Mask button. Click on the thumbnail on

the right to enter into mask mode, which is where you can paste in your textures. Now,

you could use the same image based textures as you would in Photoshop, but that defeats

the purpose of using Illustrator because the texturing effect would be entirely raster

pixel based.

To reap the full benefit of Illustrator's vector nature, use a vector texture like my

free vector Dust & Scratches textures pack. Paste a texture into the mask and rotate

and scale it to cover the artwork. You can build up as many layers of texturing as you

want to achieve the best result. Make sure the textures are filled with black so they

erase the artwork.

Click the thumbnail on the left to exit out of mask mode to see the full effect.

We can also apply the equivalent of the Ripple filter to achieve the ink bleed look. In Illustrator

it's called the Roughen effect, but it's easier to scale up your artwork first because it

requires such fine adjustments.

Go to Effect > Distort & Transform > Roughen. Check the Absolute and Smooth options, then

adjust the size to something really like small 0.2mm. Alter the detail amount to around a

third of the way up the scale to maintain a recognisable outline of your logo design.

Once you're happy with the result, scale your logo back down in size. Because we're dealing

with vectors, this scaling up and down doesn't affect the quality whatsoever.

If you want to permanently apply a texturing effect, instead of adding the texture to a

mask, you could punch out the shapes with the Pathfinder.

Make sure both your texture and your logo are two separate compound paths, otherwise

the Pathfinder can easily get upset and throw up an error. Use the shortcut CMD+8, or go

to Object > Compound Path > Make while all the elements are selected.

Place the texture over the logo, then hit the Minus Front option from the Pathfinder

panel. Sit back while your computer's CPU is overloaded with thousands of vector calculations.

The Photoshop version of this technique looks much better, but at least this Illustrator

method is 100% vector so you don't have to worry about scaling issues.

There's one more technique I want to show you that actually works in both Photoshop

and Illustrator. This one makes use of built in filters and effects, rather than external

texture files and it generates a really cool generic stamp effect.

In a new Photoshop document, make your logo a Smart Object so it can be edited later.

Apply the ripple effect as described earlier in the video.

Go to Image > Adjustments > Levels, then alter the Output levels to give the logo a grey

fill.

Next, add a Stroke layer style using the settings 13px, Normal, Inside and black as the stroke

colour.

Under Filter > Pixelate, select Mezzotint and change the drop down menu to Grainy Dots.

Next, go to Filter > Filter Gallery. Under the Sketch heading, select Stamp, then adjust

the settings to 1 for Light/Dark Balance and 4 for Smoothness.

The result is a stylized stamp effect without the tiny details of a real texture, which

works much better for logos when they're displayed at small sizes.

Illustrator also has these same filters built in. Unfortunately they don't produce the effect

in vector format, so when creating your document make sure the Raster Effects option under

the Advanced menu is set to 300ppi.

First, apply the Roughen effect that I explained earlier, then give your logo a grey fill.

Go to Effect > Stylize > Inner Glow. Set the colour to black, the mode to Normal, the opacity

to 100% then the blur to around 2mm.

Under the Effect menu, you can find the same Photoshop Filters at the bottom. Select Mezzotint

from under the Pixelate heading, then select Grainy Dots.

Head back to Filter > Sketch > Stamp and enter the same settings of 1 for Light/Dark Balance

and 4 for Smoothness as in Photoshop.

We're now at the same stage we were at in Photoshop, except there's one more feature

of Illustrator we can make use of...

Go to Object > Expand Appearance to apply these effects, then open the Image Trace panel

from the Window menu.

Turn off the Snap Curves to Lines option, turn on Ignore White, reduce the Noise slider

to 1. Set the Paths option to 100%, then go to Object > Expand.

This cool stamp effect is now 100% vector based and can be scaled to any size. This

technique benefits from the best of both Photoshop and Illustrator methods. It retains that vector

goodness, but also looks great too, unlike that first Illustrator masking technique that

didn't look quite as good as what was achievable in Photoshop.

So I hope this bunch of tips helped you out. If you enjoyed the video or learned anything

new I'd really appreciate some help to spread the word, either a Like on YouTube or a share

on Twitter or Facebook would be fantastic. If you want to stick around for more be sure

to hit the subscribe button, otherwise thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next

one!