Scratched and Bubbled
There are various ways to make your photos look
digitally scratched and bubbled. This method
uses brushes and bevels in Photoshop.
Open up your photo (I am using PSCS3, but this
should work in most photo editing software
programs).
Create a new layer above your photo and set your
foreground colour to black. Now for the
scratches, go to your brush drop down menu and
load up the default Dry Media brushes, selecting
the small charcoal brush. You can use any fine
brush that has a stippled effect.
Figure 1. Original photo
Now run your brush over your photo where you
want a scratch to appear. I have added a white
edging to my photo to show you the effect on
different colours or shades. Repeat this across
your photo, changing the angle and direction of
the brush as you choose.
On your layers menu, set the FILL option of the
scratch layer to "0". This makes the scratches
disappear from view, but the bevel we will add
will show them again. Then select the Effects
menu for that layer.
For the scratches (marked in red on the next
screen print) you will want to select the BEVEL
option and then change the direction to DOWN and
check the anti aliased option. This will make
the scratch appear to be sunk down into the
photo.
Figure 2. Bevel settings (note: red for
scratches and green for bubbles)
To apply bubbles to a photo then create a new
layer again, select the brush menu and choose
Faux Finish brushes. You should find the
texture comb brushes will work nicely for these.
You may want to reduce the size of the brushes a
little, so don’t be afraid to experiment. Drag
the brush along your photo or around in a vague
circle shape! Then change the FILL on the layer
to "0".
Again change the effects for this bubble layer
by selecting the Effects menu and BEVEL option.
This time set the direction to UP and check the
anti aliased box. You may want to reduce the
shadows though, so move the shadow slider down
to something you are happy with (around 20
worked for mine).
Figure 3. Examples of scratches and bubbles
You can go further with these effects by
changing the color of your brush to tone in with
your background, alter the opacity, add an outer
glow or use the dodge brush to add a small
highlight. If you experiment you can then save
your preferred settings as a style or set of
styles, ready to use whenever you want to
scratch or bubble the surface of something!
