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I'm trying to duplicate the sponging type effect of the background gold part of the following image:

Example image

Does anyone know of a tool I can use within Photoshop, or how else I could do this?

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migrated from photo.stackexchange.com Jul 6 '11 at 17:49


This should be migrated to the Graphic Design SE - while it is Photoshop, it has nothing to do with photo processing or manipulation. –  ElendilTheTall Jul 6 '11 at 14:48

2 Answers 2

As with most things in Photoshop, there are several ways to do this. Here's one:

Step 1: Create a new, oversized document. For this web banner example, a 4 inch x 6 inch, 300 dpi is about right, but you can go bigger.

Step 2: Press D to set your colors to defaults, and choose Filter > Render > Clouds. You're looking for a "pattern" that's about the right size and frequency for your application, so if it doesn't look anywhere close, press Ctrl-F (Cmd-F) to run the filter again until you see something you like.

Here's what I ended up with:

After running the Clouds filter

Step 3: This is too fuzzy for our purposes, so we need to greatly increase the contrast. The best tools for this are Levels and Curves. I used Levels:

Clouds with Levels applied to increase contrast

Step 4: So far, so good, but black and white isn't quite what we're looking for. The entire layer is opaque, which makes changing the blacks to something else a bit of a challenge. Once again, Photoshop has several ways to get there. I'll choose one that gives lots of flexibility later. The first step is to merge the Levels adjustment layer and our clouds layer. Press Ctl/Cmd-E.

Step 5: In the Channels panel, Ctl/Cmd-click on one of the channels to load its luminosity as a selection.

Luminosity loaded as selection in Channels panel

Step 6: Press Delete (Mac) or Backspace (Windows) to remove all the white, then Ctl-Cmd-D to deselect.

enter image description here

Step 8: Now we need to recolor our black clouds. Once again, there are several ways to do this. The most flexible is with a Layer Effect. Color Overlay will give you the look you want, and if you're feeling mischievous, throw in Bevel and Emboss. (Why? -- Because you can.)

Final texture with bevel applied

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this is wrong, doesnt look the same..white is blurring out when it should look more like random strokes. –  Muhammad Umer Jan 21 '13 at 17:49

I would suggest you to use grunge brush instead of making it by your self it will consume time. you can get such brush here :

and there are several way of doing so, alan already mentioned how to do this so do follow the same if you have good time in your hand else download such brush and complete your work fast.....

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For the OP, note that the grunge brushes are probably created in pretty much the same way as Alan suggests, only using a photo of a texture rather than starting with a generated difference cloud. –  horatio Jul 7 '11 at 13:58

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