Rusty Metal Photoshop Tutorial

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Learn how to make a rusty metallic texture from scratch inside of Photoshop. Get the look of rusty metal and peeling paint in any color you want! This realistic rust texture will help you get a worn and weathered look for digital drawing and graphic design projects. This is a super easy and fun project that you can create in just a matter of minutes.

Download the gradient pack below but the gradients are not necessary to complete the rust Photoshop texture, everything is in the video. The gradient download is only for your convenience.

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Resources used in this tutorial

Gradient pack

The Rusty Paint Texture Tutorial

Create a new document 1000×1000 pixels

In the layers panel, click the lock on the background layer to unlock it. Right-click on the layer and choose “Convert to Smart Object”

Set the document foreground color to black #000000 and the background color to white #FFFFFF

First Layer Settings

On the top bar menu choose Filter>>>Render>>>Clouds

On the top bar menu choose Filter>>>Pixelate>>>Mezzotint

Mezzotint settings: Course Dots

On the top menu bar, choose Filter>>>Noise>>>Add noise

On the top bar menu choose Select>>>Color range

Fuzziness is 30

Check off “Invert”

Click the eyedropper tool

Use the eyedropper tool to select the color white from the background color swatch

With the selection active, add a new layer. Set the background color to black then press command+delete (mac) Ctrl+backspace (PC) to fill the selection with black.

Press command+d (mac) Ctrl+d (PC) to deselect the selected area then select layer 1 right-click and choose “Duplicate Layer” you should now have three layers in the layers panel.

Click on layer one (optional right-click and select “convert to smart object”) With layer 1 selected, select “Filter” from the menu at the top of the screen then Blur then Gaussian Blur and set the radius to 5 pixels.

Set layer 1’s blend mode to Multiply

Set layer 1 copy blend mode to Hard Light

For Layer 1 Copy add a gradient overlay and bevel and emboss with the following settings.

Add a gradient map layer adjustment to the top of all other layers.

Create a rusty metal gradient, pay attention to color-stop locations and colors and set the following settings:

Remember, you can also download pre-made gradients here.