This icon was made in Photoshop CS2 but it should work in newer versions as well. Resources in this tutorial have been credited on this page if they are not my own. If you found this tutorial useful, credit would be appreciated.
This tutorial will show you how to achieve a grunge/vintage effect. There are many ways of doing it but I have used this method myself with a number of textures. It’s all very simple and no selective coloring is used. This tutorial works best on photos with some bright blue skies, as you can see below:
All photos are my own. Please do not claim them as your own. You may use your own photos; you are also welcome to use the stock images on my website.
I’ll be showing you how to make the first icon. Start by pasting your image onto a new canvas. Crop and resize so that your image is 100 by 100 pixels.
I’ve used this texture from my textures page for the next step. Paste it onto a new layer and set the blending options to Darken at 80% opacity. You can do this by double-clicking the layer preview in the side panel, or going to Layer > Layer Style > Blending options.
Feel free to move the texture around on the layer if you use the large sized one. This doesn’t look good yet, but we still have more textures to add.
The next step uses this texture from my textures page. Paste it onto a new layer and set the blending options to Soft Light at 100% opacity.
As you can see, the image is slightly brighter.
The next texture is a small basic icon texture I created and isn’t available in full size so you can copy it straight from here. Set the blending options to Linear Dodge at 100% opacity.
This really brightens up the image. You can leave this as it is, add some text and finish your icon, but I’ve chosen to add some light textures.
The following light texture is my own, available along with many others at Aquapheric.net. The blend mode is set to Screen at 40% opacity.
The next step uses a light texture from Aesthetic Intoxication, set to Screen at 50% opacity.
This is the last texture we’ll be adding. It is set to Screen at 100% opacity. You can any bokeh-style texture for this, so long as it looks good. 
A good tip is to start with a large one and drag it around until you get the effects right where you want them.
The last step is to add text on a new layer. I have added text in black – use a dark colour, then fiddle with the opacity. I have put the layer of text under all the light texture layers so it doesn’t stand out too much.
Below are the two icons I showed you at the beginning of this tutorial. The one with the branches was made in the same way. The one with the flower didn’t look appealing with the light textures, so I took them all out. Use your imagination, as what you do to the icon will depend on the colours of the original image. If you’re using an image with sky, the colour of the sky is also something to keep in mind so you don’t overdo the effects.
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