Hey guys, I'm attaching a picture here of some lettering that I found a picture of that is either done in chalk or has a really nice chalk effect on it. Maybe it isn't chalk, but that's the best way I can think to describe it haha

I'm looking for a way to take solid white lettering that I've done and add this effect to it. Like, the black splotches and stuff that make it look kind of like it was done on pavement.

Any ideas?

Hi there,

such things can be represented by rasters well -vectors may take too much resources-.

You can use your design to clip an image showing the texture,
export your image and add the grey spots in a raster program like gimp (sponge brush shape, pencil shader dynamics)
or try some filter effects.

This quick example svg shows what filtering can do:

To expand on what Lazur already said, you can do a lot of these effects in raster = Gimp, with textures.

A texture can be anything, an image of tree bark for example. There are websites out there where you can download hi resolution textures for free (texturemate.com for example).
When you have your texture ready you apply a layermask to your text and insert the texture into the layermask.
Normally a layermask will display everything that is white as opaque and everything black as transparent, so depending on the texture its a good idea to process your texture with Threshold or Levels.

Finding a texture that will make for a good chalk texture is the difficult thing here.
I stumbled over a website last week, that sells textures made of photocopies where the cartidge runs out, or a scanning of a dusty transparent vinyl sheet .
That may give you some ideas what can be used for interesting texture effects.

You guys have been really helpful, thanks a bunch!

So I'll get my text over to Gimp and see what I can do. I'm very unfamiliar with Gimp. What would I search to find a tutorial on this kind of thing? Gimp textures tutorial?

AlexAndAHalf wrote:You guys have been really helpful, thanks a bunch!

So I'll get my text over to Gimp and see what I can do. I'm very unfamiliar with Gimp. What would I search to find a tutorial on this kind of thing? Gimp textures tutorial?

here is a tutorial i wrote 3 years ago on the subject
maybe its a start ?

Thanks a bunch! Also, what is the filtering that the previous commentator was referencing?

AlexAndAHalf wrote:Thanks a bunch! Also, what is the filtering that the previous commentator was referencing?

i dont know what Lazur had in mind but you could use G'MIC filters (thats a filter plug-in for Gimp), like 'Dirty', or 'Textured Glass' for getting a layermask texture

i would still recommend going with the image as texture



EDIT
here is a video of how to apply grunge textures in IS i found interesting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7oPkiH9BI4

I'm not that experienced with inkscape's filter capabilities, so it was very basic filter tweaking.

Made the bottom text object, set undefined fill and stroke colour, then cloned it and moved it up for the base of the filtered text.
Reason for this was the chalk effect is made now of three different object on top of each, and this way you can simply retype the parent object and you will still have the right letters filtered.

The outlines are filled solid in that example, so added a white fill and a white stroke for the (bottom) clone, duplicated it and removed the stroke.
Added a cloud filter from the filter menu, opened the filter editor panel and tweaked the settings.
Fill colour of the filter to be light grey, size factors for turbulence, and a bit on the blending matrix.
This produced an evenly "dotted" texture, but the original example looked more random.
Thus, added another duplicant on top, with a white fill and noise transparency filter, and that was all.


I assume these three objects on top of eachother could be represented by one filter only, if you have a better insight you can stack them together with the filter editor.
Until the interface for it is not looking similar to fontforge's, I just don't have the patiente for that.

Espermaschine wrote:here is a video of how to apply grunge textures in IS i found interesting

There are ways making such patterns as vectors with lpe-s. Will try to make one a similar one.


Edit: here it is.