1. Download the .pat file from this website (or any other site).

2. Go to the folder that your Photoshop application is located in.

3. Open the Presets folder.

4. Open the Patterns folder. (Or for brushes, go to the Brushes folder. Brushes are .abr files).

5. You should see other .pat files here. Put your new .pat files in here, too.

6. If Photoshop is open, quit out and then reopen it.

7. Your new patterns (or brushes) can be loaded from the usual menu now ^_^

Here’s a gradient that goes from black to white, and then here’s the same gradient with the Film Grain Filter (settings 8/2/2). See how both the black and white ends are more gray?

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If you want the black side to be black or if you want the white side to be white, I suggest using a Gradient Overlay, which can be found under Blending Options when you right click on the appropriate layer.

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Your Layer Style window will probably look different from mine, but the contents should be similar. For now, let’s focus on Gradient Overlay. These are the default settings:

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Now this is where I throw you a curve ball. We already made our gradient using the Gradient Tool, and we already added a film grain. So why are we adding a Gradient Overlay that obscures the Film Grain? Well we’re actually going to use an OPACITY gradient, not a color gradient.

Click on the drop down menu next to the default gradient to bring up a window with more gradient options. The default gradient is foreground -> background. The one to the right of that is Foreground to Transparent. Choose that one.

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Now double click on the actual gradient (not the arrow for the drop down menu). This lets you modify and customize the gradient.

So let’s start by trying to make the top of our square completely black, and then fading to a light gray at the bottom. As you can see, we’re starting off with the black at the wrong end of the square.

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As the picture states, the top sliders affect opacity and the bottom sliders affect color. We’ll keep color black since we’re trying to make one end of our square black. We have to reverse the opacity sliders, however, and make 0% on the left and 100% on the right. If you click on the top left slider (the black one) you’ll see a number pop up in the Opacity box below. Change it to 0%, and then do the same for the right slider (change that one to 100%).

Now the top edge of the square fades to solid black! You can drag the sliders around and adjust the opacity to tweak the gradient exactly how you want it.

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If you want the bottom to fade to white, just switch the settings around.

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So we have the original black -> white; with film grain; with black -> transparent; with transparent -> white

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After this highly-specific explanation, the more mundane uses of the Gradient Overlay should be apparent ^^

• Flat grays
• Gradient grays
• Patterned grays

We’ll start where the Redrawing Tutorial leaves off. You’ve covered the gray area with a new layer of gray. You’ve redrawn the line art on top.

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Select the gray layer and apply the Film Grain Filter with settings 8/0/0. Filter > Artistic > Film Grain. The first slider is set to 8, the second and third are set to 0. For M7, make sure you’re working on the original 3000 px raw so that it resizes properly when you’re done.

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Sometimes, we have gradient backgrounds that go from dark gray to light gray.

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For this, use the Eyedropper Tool to take a 5 x 5 sample of both ends of the gradient (one for the foreground swatch, one for the background swatch).

Next, select the Gradient Tool, which is in the same square as the Paint Bucket. The default gradient is Foreground to Background.

First, put a layer of gray over the gradient. You can either use the Lasso Tool like in the Redrawing Tutorial or you can use the Pen Tool if you prefer.

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Now lock the transparency on that layer so you can only affect pixels that have already been designated a color.

With the Gradient Tool Selected, and the appropriate shades of gray as foreground and background, draw a line in the direction of your gradient.

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Now apply the Film Grain filter like before. You’ll have to tweak the second two sliders a little bit to make sure the gradient isn’t fuzzed out. For this panel, I used the settings 8/2/2.

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Lately, we’ve been seeing a lot of gray patterns, too. In general, they have a swirly or mottled appearance.

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Using whichever method you prefer, copy the mottled gray background onto it’s own layer. Lock the transparency on that layer.
Go Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Move the slider until the original print texture is no longer visible. The reason the layer is locked is so that you don’t blur onto other parts of the page.

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Now add the Film Grain. Like with the gradient, you might want to tweak the last two sliders to prevent the filter from fuzzing out the contrast. Again, I used 8/2/2 for this.

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I’ve come across a few instances where the differences between the grays was very small. This can be troublesome because when you apply the film grain, you lose even more of the contrast. If this happens, make a duplicate copy of your blurred gray layer and place it above the layer that gets the film grain. Now set the duplicate to multiply and reduce the opacity until you get the shades of gray you want. But since you have the extra layer, your film grain is most likely faded now, right? In this case, set your film grain extra strong to compensate for the second layer. For one panel, I had the Film Grain set to 12/2/2 and the top multiplied layer was at 80% opacity.

In some cases, you’ll have a mottled gray background with white spots. You have to be careful because if you film grain white, it’s no longer white. For this, either 1) don’t include the white areas in the gray blur layer or 2) use the magic wand to copy and paste the white areas onto a layer above the gray blur layer.

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