Making text appear battle worn.

[DjBlades]

Heyo everyone, I've been using Paint.net for a long while now but never really used many of the advanced features. I'm trying to make a background for my Steam Profile similar to this one, with my username on it. but I'm having some trouble getting the text to appear part of the weapon. I think I've got the colour right, but is there a way I can make it look worn, like it's been on the weapon for a long time? This is my attempt so far. Any help would be much appreciated!

Edited June 26, 2016 by DjBlades

[toe_head2001]

Running the Clouds effect on the text should do it.

The rest of the gun doesn't look battle worn; it's nice and shiny.
 

 

Ripping off another person's profile pic by slapping your own name on it is pretty lame though.

[dipstick]

Dang Toehead beat me to it.....

 

[Eli]

Me too!! 

Edited June 26, 2016 by Eli

[IRON67]

My try:

 

First I copied the text in a transparent layer, overpainted/cloned the dark metal in the background layer.

Then I used the text selection from the new layer for beveling the dark metal and finished this with a little bit of Jitter.

Finally I played in the text layer with noise, median and deleting/erasing some darker and lighter red pixels.

 

[Pixey]

My try:

 

First I copied the text in a transparent layer, overpainted/cloned the dark metal in the background layer.

Then I used the text selection from the new layer for beveling the dark metal and finished this with a little bit of Jitter.

Finally I played in the text layer with noise, median and deleting/erasing some darker and lighter red pixels.

 

 

Your picture has vanished @Iron .

 

EDIT:  Now I see it's back ..... I wonder where it was hiding .

Edited June 26, 2016 by Pixey

[MJW]

I while ago, I suggested some ideas for making a stamp looked roughed up. They might be combined with the cloud idea, if you want to make the paint look scraped off and chipped. Cc4FuzzyHuggles also had some suggestions on the same thread.

 

EDIT: I realized the method may not work directly, but will with a fairly easy modification. Instead of adding the noise layer to the underlying layer, what you'll probably want to do is use BoltBait's Paste Alpha plugin to paste the alpha into the text, before applying the text to the surface image.

 

Assuming you're starting with text (which may already be colored) on a transparent background:

1) Duplicate the Text layer.

2) Apply BoltBait's Effects>Object>Switch Alpha to Gray. (You should get black text on a white background.)

3) Follow the instructions for adding noise to the stamp (including using Additive blend mode), but don't Flatten as the last step.

4) Use Merge Layer Down to merge the noise layer with the black-and-white text layer.

5) Use Edit>Copy (or Ctrl+C) to copy the just-merged layer.

6) Switch to the original Text layer, and use Effects>Object>Paste Alpha to paste the modified alphas into the layer. Select the "Invert calculation" option.

7) You can now delete the black-and-white text layer. (You could also delete it after step 5.)

 

After step 3, before copying the black-and-white text, may be a good time to use the Paintbrush tool to add some edge chips. You might go with something more angular than the round chips on the stamp example.

 

The same alpha-modification idea can also be used to modulate the text transparency with cloud noise, or other types of noise. The combination of using the black-and-white text layer with the Additive noise layer means only the text will be modified by any added noise.

 

One more observation: There are hundreds of PDN built-in effects and plugins to manipulate color; far fewer to manipulate transparency. Therefore, if you want to alter transparency, you'll have many more options if you convert alpha to gray, modify the gray image, then paste it back into alpha.

[DjBlades]

Thanks for the help everyone!

 

 

Running the Clouds effect on the text should do

Ripping off another person's profile pic by slapping your own name on it is pretty lame though.

I'm not ripping it off, it's more of an experiment to be honest. I don't know anything about the advanced side of Paint.net and am looking to learn more. I've already got my own profile artwork anyway.