I don’t know about you, but I spend a lot of time in Photoshop making things look old, worn, and damaged.
The other day, I was looking for some coffee stains and watermarks to add to a piece I was working on. I found a ton of brushes, nice, I’ll save them for later — but I couldn’t find any water-damage stains that looked right. Fine. Dam. I’ll do what I usually do. Create my own stain textures.
Create your own stains.
Okay. So I got busy with a strong cup of black coffee — not for drinking, to use as a stain maker. Got myself a pile of paper, all ready to create my own unique Photoshop stain textures.
I made a right old mess. I did a lot of experiments with splashes, drips, drops, wet and dry paper, you name it, I tried it. In under one hour, every surface of my house was covered in bits of wet paper.
After everything was dry and a few cups of coffee later, I got to work sorting the best stain experiments. Quite a few didn’t make the grade, but I kept them anyway. It might come in handy.
Time to scan them in. Yes, It was boring. But with Spotify blasting out some good tunes, it soon got done. I knew it would be worth the effort.
Now, it was just a small matter of cutting everything out. A few minor tweaks here and there, and they were ready. What I ended up creating was my own stain toolkit.
The stain toolkit
It includes over 60 cutout stain textures — all in PNG format. They are really easy to use. You just copy and paste them into your artwork. A few minor adjustments to scale and opacity, and you’re done. The results look amazing.
I’m calling this collection of stains — stain-o-matic.