[Distressed effect with blending?]

I'm not new to PDN but I'm not an expert, so I apologize if this question is completely amateur and basic. It also means I don't know the exact proper terminology, so bear with me.

 

So I'm trying to get a distressed/weathered/eroded look on an regular image/font but with transparency. 

I'm attempting to use an image, a transparent texture overlay, and a background to achieve this look: 

(I created this example with a really time-consuming, tedious, roundabout janky-< no swearing > method -- I'm just seeing if there's a trick to doing this that I'm not aware of???)

 

 

1. Background = solid color  (in the example below, the red background)

2. Layer 2 = image or font  (in the example, a silhouette of a crown)

3. Layer 3 = texture .png  (in the example, a distressed overlay, but it could also be paint splatter, scuff marks, other textures, etc.)

4. IS IT POSSIBLE TO blend the layers together somehow so that the texture is "subtracted" (?) from the image and leaves the background color showing through where the texture was?

 

OR in other words,  how would you go about creating an image like the one above?

 

Again, sorry if this is a "duh" question, but I appreciate your patience and help.

[Feature request: Line/curve with transparency]

One thing I consistently find myself wishing for is the ability to draw a line/curve with transparency (kinda like making "transparency" a color) -- or perhaps another way of looking at it would be to draw a line/curve and then erase it, also erasing the pixels underneath. 

Ex:  When I use the magic wand to select an image's background and then erase it, but it leaves behind a tiny little border of color -- and yes, I've tried playing around with tolerance levels -- so then I have to go and erase that little border by free-hand.😫

 

Basically, it would be soooo helpful to have more control over the eraser than just free-handing it.   🤩