Old Paper / Faded Text

I have just started on the main board of a new board-game I am working on. I want it to look like a historic town map and have been experimenting with techniques for old paper/faded ink.

This is what I have so far, if you have any suggestions that don't involve tea and a scanner please let me know. It was done in gimp and is basically a solid yellowish colour with a bunch of multiply layers to give it texture and then a ink layer with a noise mask.

You may want to brown up the text a bit. You've got good ink-cracking, but the text looks like it's faded to green, rather than brown, and most old inks (iirc) fade to brown.

A bit of paper bleed on the ink might help. Apply a small blur and then use a paper texture as the layer mask. The attached image shows what I got with a few difference clouds to make the background, fibers to make the paper texture, brown text, and a slight outer glow.

I use the same basic steps that waldronate describes.
A slight outer blur on the text to let it bleed into the paper texture and a layer mask to make parts of the text more transparent.
I also usually start with some cloud pattern in the layer mask, but I tend to paint into the mask to make it less random.
I also often use a copy of the text layer on top of the first one, so I can combine multiply with overlay at different opacity settings.

Thanks for the suggestions, played round a bit more and got closer to the look I am after. I don't want it to look like fantasy parchment, more like a very old printed map.

I think the same basic rules would apply for printed text.
Here is the same image with a different font and different colors:

@Tear: That is simply gorgeous. Thanks for the tips on how you go about doing that. Which font is that handwriting, btw?

@GameSmith: That looks good, but it's still very green to my eye.

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@Tear: That is simply gorgeous. Thanks for the tips on how you go about doing that. Which font is that handwriting, btw?

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Agreed, the higher reputation than post count is well deserved.

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@GameSmith: That looks good, but it's still very green to my eye.

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I think my monitor might need calibrating, looking at it again on another monitor and your right it does look decidedly green.

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Originally Posted by Gidde

Which font is that handwriting, btw?

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In Photoshop it shows up as "Jellyka, Saint-Andrew's Queen".

Here is a tut on making grungy old paper in gimp (from waaaaaaaaaay back, post 533!)

http://www.cartographersguild.com/tutorials-how/533-award-winner-creating-old-weathered-paper-using-gimp.html

-Rob A>