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*Element
ELEMENT: Stamped Text
By Kathryn Balint
Oct 30, 2006, 03:28

I’ve always loved the look of letters that appear to have been stamped on the page. Here’s how I achieve this look.
First, start by typing a word or phrase in the font or fonts of your choice and the color of your choice on a transparent background. Make the text any size you’d like. I find that wide fonts work best. Black and white often makes for a striking look, but any color that looks good with your layout will do.
In the example below, I used two fonts: Adler, downloaded from http://www.1001fonts.com, and Misbehavin’, downloaded from http://www.digitalgraphiclabs.com.


Now, if you have more than one layer of text, let’s merge them. Go to Layers>Merge>Merge Visible, as shown.


If you don’t need to merge the layers because you have only one layer of text, then you need to convert the text’s vector layer to a raster layer. Go to Layers>Convert to Raster Layer. This step is not necessary if you merged two or more layers in the previous step. Next, we’re going to use the eraser tool to erase part of the letters. I used these settings: Default eraser, Size 30 (you’ll have to adjust this according to how large your letters are), Hardness 30, Step 25, Density 25, Thickness 100, Rotation 0 and Opacity 25. You can vary these settings, so you may want to experiment.


In this step, we’re going to carefully erase around the outside edges of each of the letters. Be careful not to erase too much. You, may, however, find that you need to go over the edges twice or increase the density and opacity of your eraser brush.


For the last step, we’re going to add a blur to the letters. Go to Adjust>Blur>Blur. The blur will give the letters more of a painterly look.


Here’s my final result:




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