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Making random textures.
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Creating a Random Texture:
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1.
Team Textures...
There's a ton of cool Texture Actions you can download from our site. I'm going to guide you through creating a random texture here, but what we'll do will be only one of a zillion possibilities. Here are four of the downloadable Actions which have the same element of "randomness" I'm talking about. To see how they were made, get a set and try them out. Then watch your History Palette. You'll see each step. Then try experimenting on your own. It's really addictive. By using a combination of Filters and Image Adjustments you can create an infinite variety of cool textures.
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2.
Clouds
Many of the Actions you'll download begin the same way. They use the filter, Render: Clouds to obtain a haphazard distribution of your Foreground and Background Colors which resembles, uh... clouds. It's never the same twice. In fact, if you're not happy with the appearance of the clouds you get, just run the filter again. Do it as many times as it takes to get just the cloudiness you desire. |
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3.
Shall We Shear?
Here's where all the Team Texture Actions become distinctive. After you run the Clouds Filter, you can do any number of things. For this project I chose Filter: Distort: Shear. It's pretty intuitive. You click on the line over the grid in the Shear and bend it. Your image will be bent in a similar way. Unless you like long stretches of repeated pixels, make sure Wrap Around is checked. |
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4.
Crosshatching
To make the particular texture I'm looking for, I need it to have a linear quality. So I next go to Filter: Brush Stokes: Crosshatch. In the dialogue, there are sliders that allow you to control how long and how bold the diagonally crosshatched lines will be. Here's what I got:
To the left, you can see a close up of part of the image showing the detail a little better. |
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5.
Up The Contrast
Next I used the Image: Adjust: Curves command to raise the contrast. If you're not familiar with the Curves dialogue, just choose Image: Adjust: Brightness/Contrast and crank up the Contrast Slider. |
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6.
Waving
I want my lines to have a curvy quality to them so I next turn to the Wave Filter. It's another one of the Distort filters, and it's going to push around the pixels in your image in a fashion that resembles waves in water. The Wave dialogue box is intimidating to behold, but when in doubt, just start moving the slide controls and the preview will show you what all the controls do. You control the number of wave generators, the wave type: Sine (rolling), Triangle, or Square, the wavelength (distance between wave peaks), and the height of the waves; among other things. If you're too freaked out by all these choices, just use the Ripple Filter. It's very similar and much less imposing. |
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7.
Am I Done?
I went and repeated my efforts from step 5 above. I was happy with the results from the Wave Filter but thought the image still needed a lot more difference between the lights and darks, so I pushed up the contrast once again.
Okay, it's confession time. I'm only making this texture to use with an image in my tutorial, More Fun With Blend Modes. In it, I'm going to do some cool stuff with what I created here. I picked a part of the texture I liked and selected it (left) to blend with some photos. To see what happened next you'll have to go read that tutorial. For those of you who aren't here because you read that one first, I can't just leave you hanging here can I? Well, I could, but that just wouldn't be the Team Photoshop Way. We've got a nice unassuming texture but lets see if we can't do one or two more things to make it a little more thrilling. |
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8.
Colorize
See what a Hue/ Saturation adjustment can do to liven things up? Just make sure Colorize is checked and start sliding the Hue control until you get a color you like, then adjust the Saturation slider to get just the right intensity. I love the Image: Adjust: Hue/ Saturation command. In just a few seconds, you can radically change your image. |
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9.
Now That's Texture
For this variation, along with another Hue/ Saturation adjustment, I used the Unsharp Mask filter. There I boosted up the Amount to 500% and the Radius to 5. The result is a "mega-Sharpen" command. Cool. It looks like we're seeing some really textured curved surface through a microscope.
Well, I could go on (I really could; once I start messing with an image, it's difficult to stop because there are so many possible variations), but then I might inhibit your creativity, and that's not the Team Photoshop Way, either. Hopefully, I've given you some ideas and your already off making your own textures. Adieu. |
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If you have any questions or comments regarding this tutorial please post it in this thread
http://forum.teamphotoshop.com/showthread.php?t=24691
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