How can I produce distressed, worn looking graphics for screen
printing t-shirts.  I normally use corel draw 9 and corel photo paint,
but I also have access to adobe photoshop.

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Request for Question Clarification by joey-ga on 13 Aug 2004 15:05 PDT

Can you point to an example of the type of "distressing" you would
like?  I have some experience in this, but it really depends on what
you want to do with it.

Am I also accurate in assuming that you want distressing that, to some
extent, keeps discrete colors separate so you can make a color
separation for screen printing?  Or will you be doing a four-color
process screen printing?

Hi there, I'm going to assume for now you're looking for the
traditional semi-cracked Abercrombie-esque look.  If you're looking
for a different style of "distressing", please let me know, and I can
offer other techniques.

The best way to get a truly original and natural crackling is to
actually scan in a distressed overlay (or a series of them) that you
can use over and over again with your graphics.  It would require a
scanner, but you should only need to do it once or twice, and after
creating the overlays, you'd not need a scanner again for future
distressings.

Scott Fresener has a concise and straightforward explanation for
creating the initial overlay in Photoshop and then using it either in
Photoshop, CorelDraw, or Illustrator:
     http://www.screenprinters.net/articles/index.php?art=85

If you're opposed to having to create a semi-natural distress overlay,
there are ways to sort of artificially create these, but they won't
look as natural or as good (and they have a tendency to come out
rather pixellated).

If you have any questions regarding the technique in Fresener's
article, or would like other techniques, please let me know.

As an aside, there is a wealth of useful information regarding screen
printing techniques at that http://www.screenprinters.net/ site.

--Joey

Google Searching strategy: photoshop distressed worn
  + personal knowledge

blur it usinng gaussian blur?

Photoshop has a texture filter called 'Craquelure' that gives an
interesting cracked appearance to your image.

Why not print out the image you want to distress and do it by hand?
Fold it, tear it, spill coffee on it, run it through the washing
machine, run over it with your car, rub rocks on it, whatever you can
think of. Then, scan the distressed image and use PhotoShop to put any
finishing touches on it.