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Distortionary

Filter 03 · Distressed type · 0.1 beta

Grungetyper

Type that wears like the real thing.

Set a phrase in a real font, properly shaped, then wear it down. Wear bites a set depth into every letter, so hairlines break before heavy stems do, the way old metal type and paint behave. Ink bleed spreads like ink, not like a blocky filter.

Try it on your photo Buy from $19

Beta pricing, locked in once you buy.

  • GIMP 3
  • Photoshop
  • Desktop app
  • Command line · Enterprise
The word Distortionary in letterpress style: squeezed dark ink with worn patches on paper.
letterpress, set in Neomodette Bold. 
$ grungetyper "Distortionary" -p letterpress --font neomodette --weight 700

The command that rendered it. Command-line tools come with Enterprise.

Try it live

The real filter, compiled to WebAssembly. Nothing leaves your browser.

Preset
Font
700

How it works

4 steps, each doing one thing.

  1. 01

    Set

    Real typesetting: kerning, ligatures, alternates, accents and right-to-left scripts, as the font intends. Variable fonts at any weight or width; OpenType features on or off; tracking, leading, alignment, fit to a box. 1

  2. 02

    Trace

    Each letter is traced from the font’s own outlines, at full precision. Overlapping shapes in variable fonts merge cleanly, so an A’s crossbar leaves no seam. 2

  3. 03

    Grunge

    Fray roughens the edges. Stains, speckle, scratches and cracks each add ink, remove it, or flip ink and paper. The low half of each opacity slider thins strokes; the high half removes them. 3

  4. 04

    Ink

    Fill the letters, outline them, or draw contour rings around them. Fourteen edge curves shape the cut; grain roughens it like a photocopy; transparent paper gives a cut-out.

Specimens

Each preset at its defaults, set in Neomodette Bold from Cast Iron Type.

Distortionary in cream paint on a dark green board, cracked and scratched.
worn-sign: cracked, scratched paint on a board.
Distortionary in uneven red rubber-stamp ink.
rubber-stamp: uneven red ink with bare patches.
Distortionary as a fattened one-bit photocopy.
photocopy: one bit, fattened, toner specks.
Distortionary sprayed through a stencil.
spray-stencil: soft edges with overspray.
Distortionary drawn as concentric rings, like a contour map.
contour-map: rings around the letters, like a map.
Distortionary with black blotches that flip ink and paper.
knockout: blotches that flip ink and paper.
Distortionary as a frayed outline.
outline: a frayed line around each letter.
Distortionary set clean in Neomodette Bold.
clean: the same letters, no wear.

Parameters

Every control, named.

The same names in every host and in the JSON presets. With an Enterprise license, the command-line tool reads those presets and runs them on a thousand files.

Name Range Effect
font any TTF, OTF, TTC Bundled: Space Grotesk, Neomodette, Neomodette Void, Ramitron.
weight · width · variations axis values Any location in a variable font.
features OpenType tags "-kern, ss01, liga=0"
embolden · bleed pixels Thicken the letters, or let the ink spread.
fray pixels Roughness on the edge.
stains · speckle · scratches · cracks coverage, opacity, mode Wear layers: add, subtract or invert.
mode fill · outline · contours Solid letters, an outline, or rings around them.
grain 0–1 Per-pixel jitter on the cut.

Hosts

GIMP 3
A native GIMP 3 plug-in written in C, with the filter linked in statically. GIMP 3.0 or later, Linux and Windows.
Photoshop
A UXP panel running the filter as WebAssembly. Photoshop 2024 (25.0) or later, macOS and Windows.
Desktop app
Distortionary for the desktop: open, adjust with a live preview, export. Linux and Windows; macOS later.
Command line
Enterprise only. The same filter as a command-line tool, for batches, build scripts and render farms. Settings load from JSON presets.

Built on

  • HarfBuzz / rustybuzz

    Text shaping.

  • Google Fontations / skrifa

    Outline loading and variable font instancing.

Notes

  1. 1

    Knuth (1979). TeX and Metafont: New directions in typesetting. Digital Press and the American Mathematical Society.

  2. 2

    Warnock (1980). The display of characters using gray level sample arrays. SIGGRAPH ’80.

  3. 3

    Perlin (1985). An image synthesizer. SIGGRAPH ’85. The fractal noise behind fray.

Pricing

Grungetyper alone, or the whole set.

Grungetyper

$19 $29 at 1.0

One filter in GIMP and Photoshop, one user.

  • GIMP 3 plug-in (Linux and Windows)
  • Photoshop panel (2024 or later, macOS and Windows)
  • Updates for the 1.x line
Buy

Complete set

Recommended

$49 $89 at 1.0

All four filters in GIMP and Photoshop, plus the desktop app. One user.

  • Bloomifier, Dithertastical, Grungetyper, Octodoctor
  • Distortionary desktop (Linux, Windows; macOS when ready)
  • Every GIMP plug-in and Photoshop panel
  • New filters added to the set during beta, at no charge
Buy

Studio

$199 $349 at 1.0

The complete set for up to ten seats in one organization.

  • Everything in the complete set
  • Ten named or floating seats
  • Invoice on request
Buy

Enterprise

Call for details

The command-line tools and libraries, for pipelines, servers and products of your own.

  • Everything in the complete set
  • Command-line tools for every filter
  • Rust libraries, C API and WebAssembly builds
  • Batch, server and render-farm use

Priced per organization.

Contact us

Beta prices. A license bought now stays valid through 1.x, and you never pay the difference.

The other filters

Bloom and glare

Bloomifier

Glow that follows the eye, not a blur slider.

Pattern dithering

Dithertastical

Halftones in any shape you like.

Masks

Octodoctor

Masks from gradients and keys, snapped to edges.