FMP (BA): Grunge Textures & Experimentation

I want to have a look around to see if there were any grunge textures or tutorials available on the internet to work in Photoshop and maybe Illustrator. I'm not too sure whether or not I'll be drawing it out as a vector or just simply painting it in Photoshop so I need to keep my options open.
This idea was influenced by my recent post where I talked about what aspects that the most inspirational designs had, and most of them had grunge/scratched backgrounds to give the design some texture. 

Here's a list of some of the websites that offer free grunge textures:

grungetextures.com

texture king

lost and taken

Photoshop Experimentation

I first started experimenting on Photoshop as I'm quite familiar with using textures there, so I created a new A4 document (the dimensions doesn't really matter right now) and set the background colour in black. 

I then placed a grunge texture that I got from lost and taken on the layer above it. When I changed the layer style to Overplay, Multiply and other styles the texture just totally disappeared... So out of curiousity I used a white paintbrush using a default brush tool and just dotted randomly on the page. I placed the textured layer on Overlay again and it still didn't work. However when I put it on Multiply there was a slight texture to it. 

I made my background black again and then put the layer style of the texture to Normal but just reduced the opacity. This kind-of worked but I wanted the texture to show up a lot more.

I had a play around and created a new background layer but added in a grey gradient to it, and when I put my texture on Multiply it worked! So it seems like the texture works really well on grey... I made the texture layer back to Normal and went to Adjustments > Black & White. 

Instead of making the gradient black > grey I did dark grey > grey as it would show the texture a lot more. 

Looks like I've got it! This was a really easy process so I am tempted to do it all in Photoshop.

Reflective Thinking - Summary

After this exercise I think that I might just do the texturing in Photoshop because it's a lot easier, and if I did want to do the type digitally I could just do that as vectors in Illustrator and then bring it into Photoshop. This was the method that I had done for my previous project (APP Words) so I know it will work. 

I think I shall try out this grunge texture on Illustrator once I reach that stage so that I'm not experimenting with something that I won't use after all. Besides, if Photoshop works well enough, then I could just save time and use Photoshop instead.

By doing this exercise I am preparing myself for when it comes to my final design so that I don't get stuck on it just because I didn't find a way to apply this effect. This process will be handy in future designs as well so that I don't end up being reliant on a certain effect that might not actually work out.