Expert: LizaL - 1/15/2005

Question
hi...

first of all i want to thank you for the..help and i am sorry for not

mentioning the details.. of the application i am using.

i am using photoshop CS and i wanted to learn how to make a wood

texture. i am not using it for any project but as a step in the

learning to create the textures.

i have gone through the steps.. that u have mentioned for the creation

of the wood texture but i am unable to get the wood finish. to a

certain extent the wood texture is getting formed.. near the edges of

the document but in the middle no clues of wood texture.

i have tried the variations that u have told to experiment in the

filter>distort>wave option but i am unable to get the required output.
could u please guide me as what else must be done to get a better

output of the wood texture.
thank you


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Followup To
Question -
How to create wood texture?
Answer -
Hi Abhilash,

There are quite a few ways to create wood textures in Photoshop. Can you post back and give me a little more information as to some of the details of this project?

That is, are you using a photograph to apply the wood texture to, or is it a drawing? If it's a drawing, did you create it in Photoshop, or did you import it from another program? Will this job be printed, or is it for a Web site, and will only be viewed onscreen?

Also -- what version of Photoshop are you using? Are you using a Mac or a PC?

I apologize for firing all those questions at you, but any and all added information you can provide would be very helpful.

In the meantime, I'll give you some direction using Photoshop CS.

Let's say you're using a photograph you want to apply an existing texture to. Open your image, and make active the layer that the photograph is on. Now go to the Filter pulldown menu and select Brush Strokes, then Sprayed Strokes. Within this dialog box you can change the length and radius of the stroke, and also make it change direction.

Here's a sample of what I'm talking about:
http://little-works.com/all_experts/sprayed_strokes.png

If you're using Photoshop CS, you can go to the Filter pulldown menu and select Filter Gallery, which opens up little thumbnail previews of what all the filters look like. This feature just makes it easier to choose a filter for your image.




Here's another way -- but this is creating the texture from scratch.

1. Open a new file and fill it with the brown color of your choice.

2. Go to the Filter pulldown menu and selection Noise, and then select Add Noise from that submenu. Make the amount 60, and check Gaussian and Monochrome.

3. Now go back to the Filter pulldown menu and select Blur. Then select Motion Blur, and give it an angle of 0, and a distance of 614.

4. Repeat step 2 (adding noise), but this time give the distance a value of 8. This will bring the lines closer together.

5. Right now you should have a texture that looks kind of like a furniture finish. If you want to make it look more realistic, like a knot in the wood, do this:

6. Select the elliptical marquee tool (the oval selection tool) from the toolbox, and make an oval selection on the wood texture. Then go to the Select pulldown menu, choose Feather, and enter 10 for the amount.

7. Now go to the Filter pulldown menu and selection Distort, and then Wave. Experiment with the settings to create a "knotty" sort of bump in the texture.

8. With your knot still selected, go back to the Filter pulldown menu and select Sharpen, and then Sharpen Edges.

9. Deselect, and you should have a texture like a furniture finish, with a little knotty area in it.


This is just a quick little movie that shows how you can do this:

http://little-works.com/all_experts/wood.mov


Hope this helps! If not, please post back with the additional information I asked about -- and please be very specific! -- and I'll be glad to help you further.


Lisa

Answer
Hi Abhilash,

Thanks for posting back and giving me a little more information! I hope I can help you figure out what's going wrong with your texture.

I've gone back over the tutorial steps and I wonder if you might have too low of a setting in your Motion Blur dialog box. I'm referring to Step 3 of my original answer:

>>3. Now go back to the Filter pulldown menu and select Blur. Then select Motion Blur, and give it an angle of 0, and a distance of 614.
>>


If your Distance value is too low, the center will blur, but the edges will look kind of sharp, and you had mentioned that your texture kind of looked like wood on the edges, but not in the middle.

Take a look at this and see what I mean -- watch the center of the block as I change the Distance value from a low value to a high one:

http://little-works.com/all_experts/motion_blur.mov


So that's something to check.

Meanwhile, here's another way to achieve a textured look:


1. Create a new layer, and fill it with the color you want your finished wood to be. You can fill by clicking on the Edit pulldown menu and selecting Fill... -- then, in the Contents area of the dialog box, choose either your Fore- or Background color, or click on Color and choose a color from the picker.

2. Go to the Filter pulldown menu and select Noise, and then Add Noise. Make your Amount about 7 or 8. You can leave Gaussian and Monochromatic checked.

3. Go to the Filter pulldown menu again and select Motion Blur. Make your Distance setting around 15.

4. Now duplicate this layer. I think the easiest way is to go to your Layers palette, select the layer, then drag it over the little page icon at the bottom of the palette (the icon just to the left of the trash can).

5. With your new layer selected, go to the Image pulldown menu and select Adjustments. From here, select Desaturate.

6. Set this new layer's blending mode to Soft Light -- you can do that by making sure the layer is selected, then, in the Layers palette, right below the word Layers, click on the pop-up menu and select Soft Light from the list of selections.

Also set the opacity of this layer to a low value. To do that, in your Layers palette, look for the Opacity slider at the top of the palette.

7. With this layer still selected, go to the Filter pulldown menu and select Artistic, and then Poster Edges. You can use the default settings and get a pretty good effect, or you can play around with the settings to alter the intensity of the wood effect.

8. You can now take it one step further by going to the Filter pulldown menu again and selecting Liquify. Use the Forward Warp tool (the top one in the tool box), or the Twirl tool (third one from the top in the tool box) to experiment with ways of creating little knotted places in your texture.


Here's one I did:

http://little-works.com/all_experts/wood_2.mov

It's kind of a long movie and might take a little while to load, but I hope it helps.


Please let me know if I need to clarify anything or give you any other advice!


Lisa