How to Make an Ink Stamp Effect in Illustrator

Illustrator Effects

Giving any kind of graphic an Ink Stamp appearance is a straightforward task in Photoshop. However, if you intend to enlarge your artwork, it's essential to have it in a vector format to preserve its quality. In Illustrator, making an Ink Stamp effect can be easily accomplished in less than five minutes by using the correct tools. Today, I will show you how to mimic this effect and convert your stamp into a vector format so you can resize it freely and adjust the color to your preferences once the effect is applied.

Step 1

Open your graphic in Illustrator.

Step 2

Set your graphic color to #858585.

Step 3

With your graphic selected, go to Effect > Stylize > Inner Glow. Apply the following setings and click OK.

Step 4

Go to Effect > Pixelate > Mezzotint. From the dropdown menu select "Grainy Dots" and click OK.

Step 5

Next, go to Effect > Sketch > Stamp. Apply the following settings and click OK.

Step 6

Go to Object > Expand Appearance.

Step 7

With your graphic selected, go to Window > Image Trace. Apply the following settings and click the "Trace" button.

Step 8

Lastly, go to Object > Expand. Select only the "Object" option and click OK in the Expand window.

Some Final Notes:

Now that you know hoy easy is to make a stamp effect in Illustrator, you can change the colors as you normally do and scale the graphic to your liking since we vectorized the effect using the Image Trace option.