Lesson 3 — Creating Natural Textures in Unnatural Ways

At left is a piece of basalt I've got lying around in my hard drive. I followed the directions in the lesson, with respect to the clouds and the lighting effects, but I added a step in between.

After I rendered the clouds, I went to the Channel palette and examined each of the Red, Green, and Blue channels. I took the one with the most contrast, duplicated it (dragging to new channel), and equalized it. Then I chose the RGB channel and went back to the Layers palette.

Then I followed the directions as in the lesson, but at the bottom, chose my newly created channel as the Texture channel.

At that point I began playing with the Hue-Saturation Adjustment Layer, set it to colorize (H213; S31; L+12). Finally, I decided to add a Color Balance Adjustment Layer, just to see what would happen. These settings seemed to work (S: -69,0,74; M: -46,61,18; H 75,0,-13). The result is at left.

I got something I liked, saved it and went outside because it's a beautiful day for planting the deck garden (yes, there's a point — I'm getting to it).

I came back in and started in the wood lesson. When I finished with that, I decided it was time to do the write-up for those two — and discovered that I hadn't written things down. So I went and did it again with a smaller file, and the color set I'd used for the last of my wood experiments. I got Molten Gold.

I enjoyed playing with the wood, making the textures, trying out different color combinations, and playing (for the first time) with the Liquify filter. I got the texture at right with a foreground of #BBA84E and a background of #885326, with a Fiber setting of 23,4.

Then, as usual, I began to play. I copied and pasted the result, gettting a new layer. On that layer I made a selection 500 x 50 at the top of the piece, Edit > Transform > Scale and stretched it to the bottom. Then I set the Blend Mode to Lighten, did an Auto Contrast and an Auto Level, turned off visibility on the Background layer and merged visible.

Now it was time to make this a seamless pattern. I didn't follow the directions at all. I used to do tiling that way, but the business with the Clone tool is too fussy for me. Here's how I do it. I take a rectangular selection, make a new document, and paste. Then Image > Canvas Size, click the upper left, and choose 200 percent for both vertical and horizontal. Paste; Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal. Control-click the new layer to select the pattern, and use the Move tool to line things up. Merge Layers. Select All, Copy, Paste. Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical. Control-click, line things up. Done. It seems like a lot of steps, but we'll learn later in this course about how to turn everything except the lining things up into an Action. That makes it easier. I always test a new pattern with a 1000x1000 document.

Then it became time to use the wood pattern for something. For some reason, the phrase "Wooden Heart" has been bouncing around in my head and I know I need more practice with the shapes, so I decided to use the shape tool and filled the path.

I did some layer effects to give a more carved look, duplicated layers, flipped, moved, and came up with this.

What I like about this:

The way the wood texture and the layer effects worked together.

What I don't like about this:

The fact that I didn't take the time to go back and adjust the paths so that the upside-down hearts match perfectly into the right-side up hearts. Maybe if there's time when I'm done, I go back and fix that. But then I'll have to think of something else I don't like.

Oh, dear! This is going to eat up DAYS!!!

I've been collecting brushes for years, including how to change the file structure of Paint Shop Pro brushes so I could use them in Photoshop (wait a second, the notes are around here somewhere). This trick expands the possibilities and applications of the brushes the same way that fiddling with the diameter of a sphere changes the surface area.

Well, by way of explanation, the layer effect on the right is exactly the same layer effect as the one above. The brush is one of a series called Old Bones, which consists of scanned grey-scale photos of cemetery sculptuary made into brushes. This particular one is Number 16 (folks who make brushes don't often take time to give them imaginative names; folks who collect brushes don't often change the names — they're too busy earning money to pay for the ink cartridges so they can make their catalogs).

So I set things up the way Janee suggested in the tutorial. I didn't even think to control-click (Mac for right-click) on the little f doodad to see what was there. Call me unimaginative; but by the end of June there will be nothing in Photoshop that hasn't been control-clicked on. Then I loaded the Old Bones brush set (actually, there were two before then that didn't work; they were too 'liney,' you should excuse the expression). Picked one, pretty much at random, and clicked, making a note of the coordinates where I clicked using the Info palette. Very nice, but not good enough. New layer; paste layer effect. Change color. Click at the exact same coordinates. Play with blend mode. (Ever notice that so many things end with "play with blend mode"?) Finally decided that the light yellow layer over the gold layer worked best with Overlay, but didn't like the greyed out edges. So between the background and the first layer (the one with the original layer effect), I added a black Solid Color adjustment layer (I am getting better at remembering to use adjustment layers; this is a Very Good Thing).

What I like about this:

The fact that it looks like a sculpture and the way that the colors of the two layers blend together so well. The fact that my supervisor will absolutely go nuts for this effect. The fact that I'm going to make her wait a week to tell her how I did it. (I told her about this class and she didn't subscribe; it's her own fault.)

What I don't like about this:

This is the second attempt. The first one didn't have very good veining, so I threw it out and started over.

It was done simply according to the directions and was pretty easy, once I realized what difference clouds picture would show up good veining after a Levels adjust and Colorization.

But I lie. I added another adjustment layer: Curves. Because of the colors I chose in the Colorization (H: 345; S: 51; L: 59), I added new curve points at 193,237 on the Green layer and 77,197 on the Blue layer. (An additional value to Adjustment Layers: You can look this stuff up, in case you forget to write it down while crazed with creative enzymes.)

What I like about this:

It was so easy to do.

What I don't like about this:

I didn't take the time to make a pattern of it and apply a pattern layer effect, then use the painting with layers technique from above with the cemetary sculptures.

But I will. Oh, yes. I will.

Once again, this will produce some interesting effects when made into a pattern and painted with layers,

There are, no doubt, other uses. I'm sure.

I used #EA8383 as the foreground and #305105 as the background and Difference Clouds'd 10 times. Actually, it was 11, the last one lost that interesting effect in the lower right, so I cmd-x'd it away.

Certainly, some folks in this class will do something extremely creative with this. That will, I hope, awaken me to those other uses mentioned above.