Grunge Background


Hello, in the tutorial I will show you how to make the popular grunge background. My technique is a little diffrent, so if you already know how to make grunge, you should try this anyways, you might learn something.

Step1. Open Photoshop, and make a new document with a white background.

Step2. Select your brush tool, and press F5, and this should pop up:


Step3. Now check a few boxes. I usually choose Shape Dynamics, Scattering, Texture, and Other Dynamics. Now click on Brush Tip Shapes, and choose either a grunge brush or any other brush you think will look good. Now screw around with all the settings of the boxes you checked. Some things that I do are screw with the size jitter in Shape Dynamics, the scatter amount in Scattering, I choose a nice grungy picture for the texture, and for Other Dynamics, I put the Opacity Jitter up pretty high. I'm not gonna go into depth at all here, just really screw with the settings and experiment until you get a desirable brush. This is what I got:



Step4. Now, just start brushing over your canvas. After a few seconds, change brushes, settings, flow, etc. Just keep making everything as random as possible.
Here are a few brushes i used:




Here's what I got after a few brushes:



Step5. I know it looks like complete shit right now, but to make something decent, it takes quite a long time. Just keep on using random settings and brushes, and even try to add some filters in. Also try blending options, duplicating, etc. This is the end result I got after about 20 or so minutes:



Optional: You can add a color balance layer to spruce it up a bit. I usually use yellows, greens, or browns because it makes it look dirty or grungy.

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