You can apply the Distress effect to generate a high-contrast, black and white rendering of an image. You can control the edges, smoothness, variability, and threshold of the effect. The effect interacts with either the currently selected paper grain, pattern, clone source, layer mask, or channel.
Before (left) and after (right) applying the Distress effect
| To apply the Distress effect using paper luminance |
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| 1 . | Choose Window  Media Panels Papers. |
| 2 . | Choose a paper swatch in the Paper Textures area. |
| If you want to experiment with the effect, keep the Papers panel open while you apply the effect. This way you can switch to different papers and modify the paper controls. |
| 3 . | To apply the effect to: |
| • | The canvas — Click the Canvas in the Layers panel. |
| • | A selection — Click a selection tool from the toolbox, and drag in the document window to select an area. |
| • | A layer — Click a layer in the Layers panel. |
| 4 . | Choose Effects Surface Control Distress. |
| 5 . | Choose Paper from the Using list box. |
| 6 . | Adjust any of the Distress controls. For information, see Distress controls. |
| To apply the Distress effect using clone source or pattern luminance |
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| 1 . | Open an image. |
| 2 . | Perform a task from the following table. |
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In the Clone Source panel (Window
Clone Source), choose Embedded Image from the Source list box.In the Embed Source Image dialog box, do one of the following:
Click OK.
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| 3 . | To apply the effect to: |
| • | The canvas — Click the Canvas in the Layers panel. |
| • | A selection — Click a selection tool from the toolbox, and drag in the document window to select an area. |
| • | A layer — Click a layer in the Layers panel. |
| 4 . | Choose Effects Surface Control Distress. |
| 5 . | Choose Original Luminance from the Using list box. |
| 6 . | Adjust any of the Distress controls. For information, see Distress controls. |
| To apply the Distress effect using a layer mask or alpha channel luminance |
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| 1 . | Do one of the following: |
| • | To use a layer mask, choose Window Layers, and click the layer that contains a layer mask in the Layers panel. |
| • | To use an alpha channel, choose Window Channels, and click the alpha channel in the Channels panel. |
| 2 . | To apply the effect to: |
| • | The canvas — Click the Canvas in the Layers panel. |
| • | A selection — Click a selection tool from the toolbox, and drag in the document window to select an area. |
| • | A layer — Click a layer in the Layers panel. |
| 3 . | Choose Effects Surface Control Distress. |
| 4 . | Choose the layer mask or channel from the Using list box. |
| 5 . | Adjust any of the Distress controls. For information, see Distress controls. |
| Distress controls |
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| • | Edge Size — determines the size of the edge enhancement |
| • | Edge Amount — determines the amount of edge enhancement |
| • | Smoothing — determines the roundness of the edge between black and white |
| • | Variance — determines the amount of grain added to the edge |
| • | Threshold — determines how much black is in the image |
| • | Preview — enable this check box to preview the effect in the document window |
