Creating Realistic Textures: Photoshop Woodgrain Tutorial

Creating Realistic Textures: Photoshop Woodgrain Tutorial
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So you’ve got to figure out how to get a bit of realistic woodgrain into one of your projects, but you’re out of ideas, barring using a stock image of real wood, which seems very unrealistic now that you’re looking at it. Trust me, I’ve been there. Fortunately, there are a few different ways to go about creating a realistic Photoshop woodgrain that doesn’t look out of place in a digital project, and this tutorial will discuss my favorite method. This tutorial does assume that the reader has cut their teeth on the basic functions of Photoshop , but it shouldn’t be too hard to follow. Still, if you’re new, here are a couple other tutorials that can get you ready for this one:

Photoshop Basics: Select Tool

Photoshop Basics: Using Layers

Noisy Liquid in Motion Method

“What is the ‘Noisy Liquid in Motion Method?’” You’re probably asking. Well, yes, I figured you would. In this method, we go ahead and use the noise feature to lay down our high-lights and low-lights for us, and then create a complex Photoshop woodgrain by using the Liquify tool This method pretty much works for larger documents, and larger documents alone. The nice thing, though, is that you can save the woodgrain itself and apply the texture to smaller objects. Here we go.

Here I’m starting with a basic mahogany brown as my background layer. (HEX: #332119) Immediately after that, press D on your keyboard to set your active colors to black and white.

base wood color

Create a new layer, and fill it with black.

New Layer Filled With Black

Go to “Filter” and then “Noise” and then “Add Noise” and fill your layer with:

Amount: 50%

Distribution: Uniform

Monochromatic (Check this.)

Press OK

Add Noise

Now go to “Filter” and then “Blur” and then “Motion Blur” and use these settings:

Angle: 0

Distance: 999

Press OK

Motion Blur

Use your rectangular marquee tool to select a part of the motion blur that isn’t faded from the top to the bottom, like so:

Marquee Tool

Right click and select “Layer Via Copy” and then press CTRL+T to bring up free transform. Grab one of the side toggles, and pull your section across your canvas. You’ll have something that looks like this:

New Base Grain

(Afterward you can delete your old motion blur layer.)

Now that you have the base for your woodgrain, go into “Filter” and then “Liquify.” Here is where you’re going to employ the use of the Twirl Clockwise Tool (Third button down on the left tool bar) with these settings:

Brush Size: 120

Brush Density: 76

Brush Pressure: 100

Brush Rate: 80

Turbulent Jitter: 50

Now all you have to do is drag your tool across the image from left to right or right to left - whatever you feel like! In fact, mixing it up makes it feel a little more realistic!

Creating Woodgrain

For the gaps at the edge, simply use your Forward Wrap Tool and pull them back to the edges. When you’re satisfied with your result, Press OK.

Forward Wrap Tool Gap Repair

Now all you have to do is choose what blending mode you’re going to use! Here’s an example of a few different ones:

Different Blending Modes

After playing around with it a little bit, here is my finished result:

Finished Product