How to Distress a Photograph in Paint Shop Pro X

A quick and easy way to add a distressed look to your digital photographs. Perfect for weddings, showers, birthdays and all other holiday occasions.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Paint Shop Pro X
• Any textured photo of your choice

1. 
    
   Choose your photo

   Choose the photo that you’d like to distress and bring it up into your workspace in PSPX.

2. Click Layers, and New Raster Layer. Leave the settings as they are.

3. 
    
   Texture photo

   Open the texture photo you want to use and holding the shift key down, drag it from the layers palette onto your other photo. Any kind of texture photo will work, depending on the effect you desire. Sepia toned photos work well.

4. 
    
   Layers

   You will have three layers open in the palette now. Play around with your layer settings: try Overlay, Soft Light and others to see which effect you like the best. If the distressed layer (see the red arrow) is covering too much of a face or another part of the photo that you want to remove it from, simply click the eraser tool on the tool bar and with the opacity set very low (mine was at 13), erase over faces or features or anything else. Setting the opacity low will help it all blend together rather than have harsh eraser lines. Erasing on the top layer will only erase the distressed part, not the photo underneath.

5. 
    
   Finished!

   When you’re happy with the effect, go up to layers, click Merge and Merge Visible. Save your file and you’re done!

[karileighk]

on 8/11/2009 Another helpful tut. Thanks!

[konakai]

on 8/11/2009 Thanks for the step by step instructions on how to Distess a Photo in PSP X. I like the distressed look for certain pictures. 5*****