Pipelines

Distress: add vintage grunge texture by knocking out parts of your design

Uses a texture image to selectively erase parts of your design for a worn / vintage / grunge look. Built-in masks plus upload-your-own.

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Distress takes a second image (the distress mask — a black-and-white texture image) and uses it to erase parts of your main image. Wherever the mask is dark, the main image stays. Wherever the mask is light, the main image gets see-through.

The result: a worn, grungy, vintage-textured version of your design. Perfect for retro designs, hand-distressed-looking logos, or any look where you want texture instead of clean edges.

Why this step matters

Distress is the difference between clean, perfect-looking designs (which look generic) and textured, vintage designs (which sell better in retro / lifestyle / craft markets like Etsy and Redbubble).

Doing this by hand in Photoshop on every design = hours. With Distress in your pipeline, every image in your batch gets the same texture in one click.

How to use it

Add Distress to your pipeline.
The tool ships with built-in distress masks — pick one from the included library, or upload your own.
(Optional) Adjust Rotation and Flip so the texture sits where you want.
(Optional) Adjust Alpha Threshold to control how aggressive the distress is.

The settings

Setting	What it does
Distress Mask	The texture image used to erase parts of your design. Wherever the mask is solid (opaque), your design becomes see-through; where the mask is transparent, your design stays. Pick one of the built-in textures (or See all) or upload your own PNG texture.
Rotation	Rotates the distress mask before applying. Useful when the texture's natural direction doesn't match your design's orientation.
Flip	Mirrors the distress mask horizontally / vertically / both.
Alpha Threshold (0–255, default 80)	How solid a part of the mask has to be before it erases your design. Lower = more intense (more of your design gets eaten away). Higher = more subtle (only the most solid parts of the mask erase).

Common uses

Vintage-style designs — start with a clean text logo, add Distress with a subtle texture mask, get a worn, retro-looking graphic.
Hand-distressed-looking logos — apply Distress to a clean logo to mimic letterpress / aged-paper printing.
Stamped or stenciled effects — combine Distress with Posterize (in Filters) for bold stenciled graphics.
Aged-look edges — apply a vignette-style distress mask to product images for a worn aesthetic.

Tips

Subtle is usually better. The first time you use Distress, set Alpha Threshold high (subtle) and lower it until you like the look. Heavy distress makes designs hard to read.
Stack layers. You can add a second or third distress texture, each with its own rotation and threshold — for example lines going two directions, each kept subtle.
Match the texture to the medium. Coffee-stain textures suit cafe-themed designs. Concrete textures suit industrial designs. Consistent style sells better than mixed-style batches.
Run Distress AFTER Color Removal V2 and Trim so the texture only affects the actual design, not the background.
Use the same mask across a whole batch for visual consistency. Save the pipeline as a preset so you don't have to re-pick the mask each time.
Distress works best on solid-color or high-contrast designs. Photorealistic images get muddy when you erase chunks of them.

Things Distress doesn't do

It doesn't add color or texture to your design. It only erases parts of it. To paint texture onto a design, you'd combine with Frames or Watermark Image.
It doesn't generate masks for you. You either use the built-in masks or upload your own. There's no "make me a grunge texture" button.
It doesn't selectively distress only certain colors or areas of your design. The mask covers the whole design uniformly.
It doesn't undo by lowering the threshold mid-batch. Once Distress runs in your pipeline, the eaten-away pixels are gone for that batch run.