Bernskiold Media

In this tutorial we are going to create a modern splatter effect using only a default brush and some text and blending options. It’s really simple but gives a neat effect. Follow on!

Step 1

Create a blank new Photoshop document with a white canvas. In this example I’m using 580×300px at 72dpi, but I advise you do it on a larger canvas to have some free workspace. I have chosen this size to better fit in the website.

Step 2

Create a new layer. Grab the brush tool (B) and open up the Brushes panel by going to Window > Brushes or use the keyboard shortcut F5. Also make sure you have set your foreground colours to their defaults by pressing D on the keyboard. Now in the brush settings panel, use these settings. I’m starting from a regular round brush. You can always vary the size of your brush depending on how large splats you want, note that you may have to adjust the spacing and scattering accordingly.

Step 3

With these settings applied, drag out some brush strokes on the canvas (your document). When you have laid out a base layer of splats, you should have something like the preview below.

Step 4

Next up, we are going to add a more concentrated splatter in the middle, as a base for us to place the text on. Create a new layer. Open up the brushes panel again and it should have retained the same brush settings as we just used. Lower the diameter to about ten and the spacing to about 30%. Paint in a splatter in the middle of the frame, or where you prefer to have it.

Step 5

Now we are going to be adding some text on top of the dense splat we just created. Grab the Type Tool (T) and use a font like “elfont gothic!” (available on DaFont.com) with the colour set to white. Type in the text you wish to have and position it over the splatter.

Step 6

To make the text stand out a bit from the background, we are going to add a couple of blending options. Use the settings in the screenshots below.

You now have the completed effect and should look like the preview below: