This tutorial is a breakdown in creating photographic seamless textures that can be used for 2d graphics and 3d texturing. To start off, creating seamless textures from can take any where from a couple of minutes to a few hours depending on the complexity of the pattern and the photo itself is important.

Tips:

• Look for images with even lighting and keep away from photos with a lot of specular highlighting. I make it a habit when taking photos to use natural light and turn off the camera flash or diffuse it some way. A scanner is a good option for things like cloth and paper.
• The larger the area in the image the better. For instance, when I want to make a grass texture I try to capture at least a meter or two because getting a close up will often show to much repetition.

To get started either download the below image which is a lower resolution version from this sites texture library or use one of your own.

• Open photoshop and make a new document at 512*512 pixels at 72 pixels per inch. Seamless textures don’t have to be a square image but it will help with explaining this tutorial.
• Drag and drop the original image into the new document.
• Use edit> transform> scale to scale down the original image which is now on its on layer in the document to something like the below image.

• Now switch to the Crop tool and make sure the tool is set to delete what is outside the document and then select the whole document and crop. This step is important because the filter we will be using will not work properly without cropping.

• The Filter we will be using is called Offset which can be found under Filter> Other> Offset. We will use the filter to cut the image into four pieces and flip those pieces in the horizontal and vertical direction.
• In the filter options set the horizontal and vertical offset to 256. Setting the offset to 256 pixels will put the seam in the center of the image since the original is 512 pixels. Also, the Wrap Around option should be selected.

• With the image processed the image should look like something below.

• The way this works is that if we cover up the center seams so that the center of the image looks fluid then the image will be seamless. This is an easy concept but it does take some time master.
• To get started swith to the Clone Stamp Tool. I am using a soft brush at 45 pixels with the hardness set to 50%. In my opinion using a completly hard brush or completly soft brush leaves artifacts and unwanted blurring but overtime you will probably develop your own tool set.

To use the clone stamp hold the Alt key and left click once. When holding the Alt and left clicking it sets where the clone source will start. Find a good point that looks like a good cover for the center seams and start painting over it. A good tip is to set clone points often and make sure the area being cloned has a large enough sampling area. Below are the areas I cloned from.

• In the below image I used the clone stamp and covered up the seams and the cracks in the tile. This image can almost be considered seamless. To check, use the Offset tool again with the same settings and use the Clone Stamp again to clean up any imperfections you might see in the center seams. Once the image can be offset without seeing center seam you can consider you image a seamless texture.

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