Photoshop Text Effects: Worn And Torn Text

Step 14: Apply The "Spatter" Filter To The Layer Mask

We're going to give our text a nice worn look to it at this point using the "Spatter" filter. To do that, with the layer mask selected, go up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, choose Brush Strokes, and then choose Spatter, which brings up Photoshop's massive Filter Gallery set to the Spatter options (circled in red on the right):

There's only two options for the Spatter filter, Spray Radius and Smoothness. Feel free to play around with both sliders to see which settings work best for your text, which you can view in the large preview window on the left of the Filter Gallery. I've just gone and dragged both slider bars all the way to the right to set both options to their maximum values of 25 for the Spatter Radius and 15 for the Smoothness, which gives me the effect I'm looking for:

Step 15: Apply A Stroke To The Text To Complete The Effect

To finish things off, I'm going to add a stroke to my text. With my text layer selected, I'm going to click on the Layer Styles icon at the bottom of the Layers palette:

Then I'll select Stroke from the list that appears:

This brings up the Layer Style dialog box set to the Stroke options in the middle column. By default, Photoshop uses a solid color for the stroke, but I'm going to use a gradient instead. To change it, click on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the Fill Type option, then select Gradient from the list:

The Fill Type options will then change to options for the gradient. Click on the gradient preview area to bring up Photoshop's Gradient Editor to choose new colors for the gradient:

When the Gradient Editor appears, double-click on the black color marker on the bottom left of the gradient preview bar in the middle of the Gradient Editor, which will bring up the Color Picker, and choose a bright red color. Click OK to exit out of the Color Picker, then double-click on the white color marker on the bottom right of the gradient preview bar. The Color Picker will re-appear. Choose a dark red color this time, then click OK to once again exit out of the Color Picker. Here's my colors below:

Click OK to exit out of the Gradient Editor, then click OK to exit out of the Layer Style dialog box to apply the stroke to the text (no need to make any other changes to the Stroke options), and you're done!

Here, with my gradient stroke applied, is my final "worn and torn" text effect:

And there we have it!

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