Seamless Tiling of a Satin Fabric

There are many ways to make seamlessly tiling patterns, this is one of them and is, in fact, the method I use the most.

To make things a little simpler, we're going to use 2 plug ins that you will find in the download section on this site, so if you don't have them already, run along and get them and I'll wait right here. The plugins you'll need are:

Patterneditdo and Patterneditundo

These plugins are freely available thanks to the overwhelming talent and generosity of Dennis Crombie of bMath.net who asks that, if you like his work, please donate something of yourself where it is needed. (Be careful, Dennis, radical ideas like that get people into all sorts of trouble, especially if it looks like it's catching on).

Okay! We've got our plugins downloaded and installed. Time to move on. The first thing we're going to do is create a texture to tile. This will be a satin fabric just lying naturally dishevelled.

Step 1:

Create a new document (picture) in Photoshop of whatever size you like. While it's not necessary that it be a perfect square, it avoids some problems if it is, so humor me and make it square. When I make seamless tiles I always use sizes that are multiples of 2 such as 128x128, 256x256, etc. It is my understanding that some software will only use tiles of such dimensions (3d game engines?). I've never used any of that software, never even seen any, but, what the heck, it's just as easy to make it one of those sizes than not, so I do?

This time I'm using 512x512 for mine. Use the Bucket Fill Tool and fill your panel background with white (#FFFFFF).

Step 2:

Now, select a soft brush sized at about 30 to 40 pixels (or relative to your picture size) and scribble some black (#000000) all around. Don't over do it, Just about like we have here.

Step 3:

My favorite tool in Photoshop is the Smudge and that's what I'm going to use here, at about 65 pixels wide, although there are several other ways to achieve the result we're after in this step. What we want is to partially blend the white and black together so that the transitions are smooth and gradual.

Step 4:

The next step here is to use the Filters> Sketch> Chrome effect. I used settins of 4 for detail, 10 for smoothness, but you should use whatever looks best to you. Remember, we're shooting for a rumpled, flowing satin fabric.

step 5:

Okay! Not bad, huh? Now for the tiling. Lots of folks use the Clone Stamp Tool for this and thee's no reason you can't, too, but like I told you, my favorite tool is the Smudge. Anyway, using both can be very effective sometimes.

First we need something to smudge, so using the filter you installed earlier, run Filters> DC Special> PatternEditDo on your texture and click OK. Your texture has now been quartered and rearranged so that the outside edges are now on the inside facing each other.

Step 6:

Use the Smudge Tool to gently blend away the seams. Be careful not to disturb the current outside edges.

Step 7:

Once you have it smothly retouched to your satisfavtion and free of any divisive seams it is time to reassemble your texture to its original state. To do this run Filters> DC Special> PatternEditUndo and click OK. The 'quartered' texture is now unquartered and, before you put your Smudge Tool away, check to be sure you haven't accidently created any seams or other anomallies in the interior. If you find that you have, just blend them away.

Step 8:

You now have a completely tilable satin texture. If gray satin is not your favorite you can go fo another step. Select Image> Adjustments> Hue & Saturation (or simply press Control + U), check the Colorize box and adjust the Hue slider to get the color you desire and adjust the Satuation and Lightness controls accordingly.

Hey, how 'bout that? We're done! I hope you had fun!

Safe Transactions By:

Click here to return to the Tutorials Page.

Copyright © 2004 M3 Corp., Inc.