How To Use Textures In Illustrator

10 tips for better Photoshop textures

While 3D painting applications such every bit The Foundry's Mari are gradually replacing 2nd software for texture painting, Photoshop nevertheless remains a stalwart for many, with its flexibility and advanced blending, painting and masking tools nonetheless offering a robust package for texture painters who take either not invested in a 3D painting parcel nevertheless, or go on to use it alongside a 3D package.

Photoshop still has a few tricks up its sleeve that the 3D options don't yet offer, peculiarly when it comes to blending and adjusting layers in a texture. Additionally, the user-friendliness and familiarity of the application make it a good solution for things that need to be done quickly and with minimal fuss.

This is a drove of essential techniques and tips for texture painters using Photoshop.

These represent some of its greatest strengths with regards to our particular subject area, and volition help to improve your efficiency and texturing approach if you contain them into your workflow. Many of these are peculiarly notable for their non-destructive approach.

In other words, they apply tools and techniques such as adjustment layers and layer masking, which offer a great manner to alter your document in a non-permanent style, then you tin can modify or even completely undo your work at a afterward stage without excessive reworking.

This not-destructive workflow has always been one of Photoshop's greatest flexibilities when it comes to painting textures, and is a core reason why it remains an essential office of most texture painters' toolsets.

01. Customising your brushes

Using Angle Jitter set to Direction with a custom brush is great for painting hair and fur — Using Bending Jitter set to Management with a custom brush is great for painting hair and fur

Photoshop's brush engine is an extremely robust and highly customisable i, offer a wide array of custom features that you tin can tailor to your detail style of painting, or to achieve a specific effect.

Creating brushes from any bitmap shape is as simple as selecting the shape and so selecting Edit > Define Brush Preset, which creates a new castor in your current Castor palette from the option.

You lot tin then open the Brush Tool palette and add additional enhancements to information technology. Among the most useful of these are Angle Jitter, which causes the castor's shape to follow the direction you're painting in – which is great for painting things like fur or stitching details on vesture.

02. Good cloning techniques

Everyone loves Photoshop'south Clone Stamp tool, more often than not ordinarily simply referred to as the Clone tool. However, there'southward a play a trick on to using it in such a way as to prevent areas from becoming soft and blurred, and that's to employ hard-edged, custom-shaped brushes.

Using Photoshop'due south default round brushes with soft edges, which is what many beginners use (and what you would employ in many other circumstances), tends to result in soft patches in the texture, due to the soft edges of the cloned patch of pixels. Using a custom shaped, grungy type brush with hard edges volition reduce this soft issue. Utilize custom-shaped brushes – circular brushes don't look skilful when cloning with hard edges.

03. Employ layer blend modes

Using Photoshop'south layer blend modes generally produces more natural-looking results than simply lowering the opacity slider on a normal blended layer.

Modes such as Overlay, Multiply and Soft Light in item are very useful for layering different photographic textures or painted layers with pleasing and organic-looking results, with each style using the tonal values of the layer differently to produce the final result.

While these blending modes tin be useful for all kinds of textures, they're especially efficient at creating organic textures, because blending multiple layers on tiptop of one another produces a sense of substantial depth. This impression of depth is especially good for creating the look of living organic tissue.

04. Advanced blending

Hidden away in the Layer Mode dialog, under Blending Options, are the incredibly useful Blend If sliders. You'll find them nether the Advanced Blending header.

You employ these to blend the layer according to either its ain grey or RGB values, or the values of the layer below information technology, or both. They enable yous to define value ranges that go transparent.

The sliders are particularly useful for dropping a photographic texture onto the one beneath it, such as a photograph of some rust onto an underlying metal layer. Holding downwards [Alt] while adjusting a signal on the slider splits it to allow a effectively transition.

The dialog also offers a number of other options for expanding and fine-tuning layer blending.

05. Aligning layers

Adjustment layers non-destructively alter underlying tones and colours — Aligning layers not-destructively alter underlying tones and colours

Aligning layers have long been one of Photoshop'due south greatest features, allowing you to modify the values of colours or tones of the layers below them without permanently applying the alter to them.

Levels, Hue/Saturation and Color Residue are all of particular apply to the texture painter, and when used in combination with the Blend If sliders (run across tip 4), they're a powerful way to selectively alter tones and colours without having to employ layer masks.

For example, you can apply the Alloy If sliders to make the adjustment layer affect only the light pixels, or just the night ones, or any of the red, green or blue tones of the underlying layers.

06. Layer clipping

Clipping an adjustment layer to the layer below protects the layers beneath the clipped layer

Some other somewhat subconscious feature of layer usage is the ability to prune layers to others. Clipping an adjustment layer to another layer will have the adjustment affect only that single layer, while clipping a regular layer to another will have the original layer's visibility controlled past the layer to which it is clipped.

In other words, the visibility of the clipped layer will depend upon the opacity of the pixels of the layer to which it is clipped. To clip a layer to another, only position i above the other, hold down [Alt], position your cursor betwixt the two layers in the Layers panel to get the prune option, then click.

07. Layer masks

Layer masks are the most effective way to control a layer's visibility non-destructively — Layer masks are the most constructive manner to control a layer'south visibility not-destructively

Masks are a great way to control the visibility of whatever layer. Due to their nature they are totally not-destructive, equally you tin utilise them to simply 'hide' portions of a layer instead of permanently erasing those pixels.

They're peculiarly useful in texturing when combined with grunge maps, which are essentially high-dissimilarity images created from detailed photos. This allows you to blend layers together using highly detailed, organic masks that retain natural-looking shapes in their details.

Correct-clicking a mask also allows you lot to open the Refine Mask dialog, which has numerous options for further refining the results. These are also all non-destructive, because the pixels of the mask aren't permanently altered by adjusting them.

08. Masked adjustments for removing lighting

Masking adjustment layers is the best way of non-destructively removing lighting from an image — Masking aligning layers is the best way of non-destructively removing lighting from an epitome

Using layer masks in conjunction with adjustment layers provides a highly flexible and effective way of painting light out of photos and evening their tones, especially when using them to mask Levels and Hue/Saturation layers.

Once again, this is a non-destructive technique, which allows for constant refinement or alteration at a after phase, and because yous're not painting onto the actual pixels of the layer that'south having its lighting removed, you stop upwards with a cleaner, more controlled result.

We use this technique a lot when dealing with reference photos of actors, or ready pieces that need to be projected onto their equivalent digital doubles in film work.

09. The High Laissez passer filter

The High Pass filter can be used to create a quick base for bump maps from a texture — The High Pass filter tin can be used to create a quick base for bump maps from a texture

The Loftier Pass filter, found under Filter > Other, is useful for two things in texturing: sharpening photo textures that are a little soft or need more item enhancement, and for creating quick bump maps.

For the quondam, simply duplicate the layer, desaturate it, and employ the High Pass filter with a relatively low radius (beneath 5 pixels), and then blend it using Overlay above the original layer.

For bump maps, desaturating and applying Loftier Laissez passer at a relatively high pixel value is a quick way to become a good base paradigm, because the filter'due south effect is based on an average of 50 per cent grey; this is good for crash-land maps because 3D renderers use l per cent gray as the median point for greyscale maps such as crash-land and specular.

10. Using opacity finer

Carefully build up tones by using low opacity brushes for a more natural look — Advisedly build upwards tones past using low opacity brushes for a more natural await

Perhaps i of the nigh crucial pieces of advice I can give about painting textures in Photoshop is to use a build-upwardly approach – in other words, painting (whether it'southward actual painting on layers or on layer masks) is often best accomplished by using depression-opacity brushes to build up the tones slowly, every bit opposed to simply slapping opaque paint details onto a layer and trying to blend them downwardly.

Painting with a gentle arroyo is likely to yield the best results in most cases, especially when it comes to organic textures, just also when dealing with hard surfaces.

Leigh van der Byl is a VFX texture painter in London. Her recent credits include X-Men First Class and the upcoming sci-fi thriller Gravity. She also scours the globe shooting landscape photography in cold, bleak environments

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