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Photoshop Tutorial 0005 - Creating Fabric Textures

Ever been strapped for time and needed that perfect texture for a layout or 3D object? You could scan a texture, but what if the scanners are full or you don’t have anything to scan? That is where Photoshop can help.

Warning: This is a fairly long tutorial due to the fact that that there are so many variations in each technique. But, once you have the technique down, you can generate textures fairly quickly.

Fabric Textures

A note: I have over-exaggerated the settings used in this technique to better illustrate variations in the texture.

1. Create a new document. Make it 200 x 200 pixels, with a background of white and the dpi set to 72 (if you intend to print textures later, you will want to start at a higher dpi).

2. Set the foreground color to black and the background color to white. We want to start out by adding some noise. Go to the FILTER menu and choose NOISE > Add Noise…. Set the amount to 285, the distribution to Gaussian, and set it to Monochromatic.

3. In the FILTER menu, choose BLUR > Motion Blur. Set the angle to 90 degrees and the distance to 700 pixels. Click the OK button.

4. Duplicate the Layer by going to the LAYER menu and choosing Duplicate Layer.

5. Rotate the new Layer 90 degrees clockwise. (EDIT > TRANSFORM > ROTATE 90° CW).

6. Now the fun really starts. Select the top layer. In the Layers palette, you have the option to change the blending mode between the layers. It is set to Normal by default. Set it to multiply and see what happens. You now have a plaid-like pattern. Try the other blending modes to see what comes up.

Multiply	Screen
Overlay	Soft Light
Hard Light	Darken
Lighten	Difference
Exclusion

You can also mess with the opacity of the layers, add color, change the brightness and contrast, and blur layers to create more variations!

Part 2: Another Take on This

Kai Krause has a tip similar to this that produces quite nice textures. I couldn't find the original Kai's PowerTips tips online, so here is what I remember about it.

1. Create a new 200 x 200 document.

2. Add noise again, this time setting the amount to 170. The distribution should still be Gaussian and monochromatic.

3. Use the Motion Blur filter again, setting the angle to 90 and the Distance to 56. Click the OK button.

4. Now we'll apply the motion blur again, this time setting the angle to 0. Click the OK button.

5. The result doesn't look like much yet. We need to adjust the Levels. Open the Levels dialog box. (IMAGE > ADJUST > Levels) Se the black Input level to 178 and the white to 198. You should see a dramatic difference.

Again, you can play with the settings to get more subtle results. Look for a tutorial dealing with creating paper textures soon!

Here is an example of the fabric texture in use. Notice the curtains.