first, open the photoshop file....first, open the photoshop file. second, grab a texture you have...

Hello,

Doink here, one of the designers coffee drinkers who made those badges. I hear you're having trouble adding that particular texture to them. But not to worry, I'm here to explain it to you. First, open the Photoshop file.

Second, grab a texture you have lying around and open that one with Photoshop, as well.

What we'll do next is to use this texture as a layer mask. But to do this, we'll need it to be with blacks and whites and as less grays as possible. Hit CTRL+ J to duplicate it. You'll now have two layers.

Hit CTRL + Shift + U to desaturate it.

Hit CTRL+L and pump up the values until the texture looks like mine: white with small black spots.

Hit CTRL + I to invert colors. It will be black with small white spots.

Grab the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M), select an area with small white spots and copy it (CTRL+C).

Go back to the document with the badges, select a badge and add a layer mask to one. Make sure it's applied to the group, not to elements within the group.

ALT + Click the mask. Don't worry, you haven't deleted your work, you're now editing within the mask.

Hit CTRL + V to paste in the texture.

It will be huge, but zoom out a lot.

Hit CTRL + T and resize it to be a wee bit larger than the badge. Then, hit Enter.

ALT + Click the mask again to exit mask mode. It will look awful, but bear with me here.

With the mask still selected, hit CTRL + I to invert the colors again.

Et voila!

The cool part about this technique is that it takes its grunge color from the background. Look:

If you want the grunge the be subtler, hit CTRL+ L and play with the values on the mask. How it works: The layer masks uses black and white to determine the transparency in the mask. So black fully hides everything, while white shows all of it. Using a texture for it throws in a wider range of blacks, whites and grays, giving us that beautiful effect.

Hopefully this helps, and all the best :)

By the way, whenever you need assistance with anything, give a shout and ask for Doink. I'd be happy to help.

Bye.