Photoshop tutorial grunge text background

This Photoshop tutorial will explain you how to make your own personal text background.

Make a new document, CTRL + N. Set width and Height to your own screen resolution. In my case this is 1680 x 1050.

Now you can either go find your own landscape image or use the one I used.

Now duplicate your landscape background and go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. You need to blur your image so all details in the landscape disappears but the colors remain. I used the settings as shown below.

Okay, so now we want to add some grunge effect to the image to get a more dirty look. To do that use a grunge brush. You can find grunge brushes at websites like deviant art, brusheezy etc. If your to lazy finding your own grunge brush use this one. When you got your grunge brush, make a new layer and start painting till you get a dirty look like shown below.

Now we want to start adding the text. But before we do that make a new folder to put your text layers in. Set the folders blending option to overlay. Now start adding your text layers with your own text and simply just rotate them. When I rotate the text layers I hold down the SHIFT key so that I want get any random rotations which can make it look a bit weird.

When you're done with your text layers you should have a result like this.

Congratulation, you have just made your own grunge text background. Now you can keep reading the Photoshop tutorial if you want to improve this picture a bit or you can just move on.

When I made this I thought that the middle text should have a little more focus than the other ones. So I used the following Blending Options for only that layer.

Now you should have a little shadow for that layer but still wasn't enough. To make even more focus, we could darken everything around the text a bit. To do this make a new layer on top of all the others and fill it with black. Now add a layer mask to the black layer, Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal all.

Now make sure you have the mask selected in the layers window. Select the Gradient tool (G) and make sure you have set it to Radial Gradient with the foreground color as black and the background color as white.

Now use the tool to paint from middle and out. Then you should get a smooth darkening like this.

Now you're all done. You finished the Photoshop tutorial. Be proud of yourself !