How to Create a Rubber Stamp Effect in Photoshop
The great thing about layer masks is that they allow us to make edits later on in our projects without having to undo steps we’ve already completed or having to somehow know, several steps back, that we’d see this effect in the end. Navigate to the File > New menu item and choose the new document size you want, and then press OK to build it. Make it fairly large (100 pts in this image), and type in uppercase. If with your particular font, you don’t like the tight spacing between the letters, open the Character window the Window > Character menu item, or click its icon in the options bar for the text tool. Click between the letters whose spacing you want to adjust, and then from the Character panel, set the kerning value to a larger or smaller number to increase or decrease character spacing. You can also highlight the letters and adjust the tracking value. Press Enter to confirm the adjustment. Use these settings to the tool’s properties at the top of Photoshop:
Radius: 30 (make this appropriate for your document size)Fill: None (the grey box with the red line through it)Stroke: Black
Draw the rectangle a bit larger than your text so it surrounds it with some space on all the sides. If it’s not perfect, switch to the Move tool (V) with the rectangle layer selected and drag it where you need it. You can even adjust the rectangle’s spacing from the stamp letters with Ctrl+T (Windows) or Command+T (on a Mac). With the rectangle layer selected, right-click it and choose Blending Options…, and use these settings in the Stroke section:
Size: 12Position: OutsideFill Type: ColorFill Color: White
With both layers still selected, right-click one of them in the Layers palette and choose Convert to Smart Object. This command will combine the layers but leave them editable in case you want to change your text later on. In the pattern fill dialog, click the thumbnail on the left to get the palette to pop out. In that menu, click the small icon at the top right and choose Artist Surfaces to open that pattern set. Now click OK in the “Pattern Fill” dialog box. Set the levels to about 6 to reduce the number of unique colors in the image to 6, giving the pattern a much grainier appearance. Hide the pattern fill layer and the posterize adjustment layer. Make the layer with your stamp graphic the active layer by selecting it. Click the Add layer mask button (the box with a circle in it) from the bottom of the Layers palette. So long as the selection was still made when you clicked that button, the graphic should look distressed and much more like a stamp.
Blend Mode: Vivid LightColor: Select the color box next to the “Blend Mode” line and use the follow RGB values to create a faded red look: R255 G60 B60Opacity: 100%
These are the settings we used, just make sure the color of the glow matches what will ultimately be your background color (white in our example):
Blend Mode: ScreenOpacity: 50%Noise: 50%Technique: SofterSource: EdgeChoke: 0%Size: 3 px
Click OK on the “Layer Style” window to close the dialog box.
