Create an Awesome Grass Texture in Photoshop

This is the fourth and final installment of my series on creating textures in Photoshop. If you missed the first three, they were creating: Water Texture, Wood Texture and Stone Texture. This tutorial will combine much of what we learned about in the first three installments, we will also go over some new techniques, and add some finishing touches that pull the whole look together.

Onward, to the Tutorial…

1. Bring up Photoshop and create a new document at a size that you like. I used 500px by 500px
2. The first thing we need to do is make a dirt background to show through from underneath the grass we will create. Set your foreground and background colors to black and white. A shortcut for this is to restore Photoshop’s color defaults by pressing ‘d’ on your keyboard



3. Rename the background layer you are working on, call it dirt, or something applicable. (We will be using a couple layers in this tutorial so this will help organize things.



4. Go to the toolbar at the top and click filter->render->clouds. This will give us a nice base to work from.



5. Add some noise and interest to our dirt. Click filter->noise->add noise. Change the amount to 44%, the distribution to gaussian and make sure monochromatic is checked on. (All these types of settings are merely suggestions, it’s by tweaking these settings, that you will really begin to get a grasp on Photoshop filters.)



6. Add a gaussian blur to the dirt layer. Click filter->blur->gaussian blur. Set the radius to 0.9 pixels.



7. Let’s add one more filter to this dirt layer. Click filter->brush strokes->splatter. Set the spray radius to 21 and the smoothness to 2.



8. Now we need to give the dirt layer it’s color. Click image->adjustments->hue/saturation. Make sure to check preview and colorize. Then change the setting to a nice brown. I used: Hue: 49, Saturation: 29, Lightness: -38. Click OK.



9. OK, we are now finished with the dirt layer. That gives us a nice texture and color underneath the grass we are about to create. Let’s start on the grass. Create a new layer and name it “Grass.”
10. Change your background color to a grassy color green, I used, #52782F. Hit ‘ctrl, backspace’ to fill your current layer (Grass) with the green color you selected.
11. Add some noise to your new grass layer. Click filer->add noise->noise. Choose 30% for the amount, gaussian for the distribution, and check monchromatic. Click OK.



12. Blur the grass layer. Click filter->blur->gaussian blur. Change the radius to 0.9 pixels, click OK.



13. We are getting closer, but it still doesn’t look a whole lot like any grass I’ve ever seen. We can use a couple of wind filters to lengthen the grass and simulate the look of blades. Click filter->stylize->wind, and change the settings to: method, stagger and direction, from the right. Click OK.



14. That looks a little better, but grass doesn’t grow all in one direction. So we need to add a little more direction and interest to our layer. First click image->rotate canvas->90 CW. Click OK.
15. We are going to repeat the last two steps now, but go in the opposite direction. So go to filter->stylize->wind again and choose stagger, from the left. Click OK.
16. Now flip the image so the grass looks verticle. Click image->rotate canvas->90 CCW. Below is what I’ve got so far…



17. I think this grass could use a little more contrast. Change the levels by clicking image->adjustments->levels. Drag the white and black sliders towards the middle till you get the variance you are after. Click OK.



18. This is already a pretty useful grass texture, but we are going to take this tutorial a bit further. If all you need is the grass, you may want to jump down to the steps on masking to reveal some of the dirt layer underneath. Otherwise, stick with these steps to add some lines to our field of grass to make it look like a football field. First off create a new layer, make sure you add it to the top of the layers (ie above Dirt and Grass), and name this layer Lines.
19. Grab the brush tool (’b’ is your keyboard shortcut). Open up you brushes palette, window->brushes. Locate and click on your watercolor loaded brush 63 (shown in the image below). This is a cool Photoshop brush with some rough edges.



20. Change your foreground color to white. Start somewhere in the bottom left and click and drag toward the right side. You may have to try a couple times (if you are like me) to get a straight enough line. If you mess up just hit ‘ctrl, z’ on the keyboard to undo the brush stroke you drew.



21. Use the same brush but scale the width down to about 45 pixels, either by pressing the ‘[’ on the keyboard or locating the size options in the properties box at the top for brushes. Make a line perpendicular to the first line you drew, going from that line to the bottom right hand corner.



22. Add noise to the lines. Click filter->noise->add noise. I used 11% for the amount.
23. We should make the lines look like they are painted into the grass so we are going to add a subtle inner shadow. Double-click next to the name in the layer palette (if you are following along it should be lines), this will bring up the layer style dialog box. Check inner shadow and change the opacity to 60, the distance to 4 and the size to 4. Click OK.



24. The lines are starting to make sense on the field, but let’s try to blend them even more so. Change the opacity to 90 and the fill to 95.



25. Now we are going to put the 50 yard marker on the field. Click on the text tool and in the properties for the text tool at the top of the screen, change your font to a stencil type font. I used ’stencil std’ but you can use whatever you think works best. Just a quick side note, their are many really good free font sites out there, one of my favorites is www.dafont.com. Change the font size to something like 72 (we can adjust the size later) and the color to white. Now click anywhere on the field itself with the text tool still selected. This will create a new layer at the top of the layers for us. Now type 50.
26. Hit ‘ctrl, t’ on the keyboard to bring up the free transform tools. Hover over the middle of the 50 and click and drag it into the correct area. Then resize it to your liking by clicking and dragging any of the corners out (if you’d like to keep the proportions hold shift down while you drag). Finally, rotate the angle to the way you’d like. Hover over a corner until you get a double arrow with an arch for the curser, then click and drag.



27. Convert the 50 layer to a smart object by right clicking (ctrl click on the mac) on the layer and selecting convert to smart object. This will allow us to handle this layer just like the others, in this case we need to add a filter. Keep in mind that once you convert a text layer to a smart object you lose the ability to change the text.



28. Now we add the same amount of noise to this layer as we did with the lines. Because the last filter we used was noise, all we have to do is click filter->add noise
29. Next up, we need to put the inner shadow on the 50 layer. Right click on the Lines layer and choose copy layer style. Then right click on the 50 layer and choose paste layer style. This will copy and paste the same layer style properties to the 50.



30. That looks pretty cool, but their are a couple more things we can do. First off, we still have a dirt layer underneath, that we’d like some part of showing through. Let’s put all the layers besides the ‘Dirt’ on their own. Click on the 50 layer, then with the shift key held down click on the grass layer to highlight everything but the dirt layer. On the keyboard hit ‘ctrl, shift, alt, e’. This will place all these layers on top by itself. Rename this layer ‘Field’. Then hide 50, Lines and Grass layers by clicking on the eyeball icons near each one. All that should be showing now is ‘Field’ and ‘Dirt’.



31. Add a layer mask to the ‘Field’ layer, by clicking the mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette.



32. Now we will paint on the layer mask to reveal some of the dirt layer underneath. Change the foreground color to black. (Black reveals and white hides).
33. Grab the brush tool again and open up your brushes window. Now click on the small arrow shown below to reveal all your brushes you have. Grab your favorite grunge brush set and click OK. If you don’t have grunge brushes, you can play around with what may work. However, I would suggest you head on over to bittbox, deviantart or brusheezy to find some grunge brushes you can use, they will come in handy often. Then place the brushes into your Photoshop brushes for use, you can learn some more about that and creating your own in this article.



34. Now that you have a grunge brush you like begin painting black on the mask of the ‘Field’ layer to reveal the dirt layer underneath. Subtle dabs here and there work best, don’t overdo it, however if you do, you can always paint white back on the layer mask (which is the joy of using them :))



35. Their is one more thing I did on mine to help the overall feel of a field with lights, and that is a nice lighting effect. Click back to the field layer, not the mask, and click filter->render->lighting effects. The defaults for spotlight aren’t bad, but play around with the sliders and the spotlight thumbnail on the left side. When you like the preview click ok. Below are the settings I used.

That’s pretty much it. I finished my field off by playing with the levels to increase the contrast and cropping the image to make it more horizontal. I hope this gives you a good idea of the power of filters in Photoshop. If you come up with an interesting variation, I’d love to see it, send me an email. Below is my finished field.

Text In Stitches

1
Lets go ahead and begin by opening a new document in Photoshop. Mine is 540×300 pixels at 72ppi. Since stitching on a plain white canvas is a little silly, lets go ahead and spice up the Background layer with a little texture. By default the Background layer in any new Photoshop document is locked, so lets go ahead and double-click on the Background layer in the Layers palette to bring up the Layer Properties dialog box. Simply rename the layer or name it Background once again and hit OK to unlock the layer.
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Now that our Background layer is unlocked we’re going to add a Pattern Overlay Layer Style to it which will give us a quick and easy denim background to work with. Control-Click (PC: Right-Click) on the Background layer in the Layers palette and choose Blending Options from the menu. This will bring up the Layer Styles dialog box. Click on the Pattern Overlay text in the left column. (You must click on the text and not on the checkbox. Clicking the checkbox will turn the style ON but it won’t give you the options for the style, so it is important to click on the text so we can modify the Pattern Overlay style options.) Next we need to load a new set of Patterns into the Pattern Picker. Click on the Pattern swatch to reveal the Pattern Picker, then click the little circle with the arrow in it at the top right corner of the picker. Choose "Patterns 2" from the list and click OK to load the new pattern set into the Pattern Picker. Now simply click on the Denim swatch which is the 4th pattern in the set and click OK to close the Layer Styles dialog box and commit the style to the layer. Yes, I know, this graphic is a mess… but hopefully it gets the point across.
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You should now have a background full of denim and a layer style icon in the Background layer of the Layers palette.
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It’s now time to add some text to our document. Press the D key to reset the foreground color to black, then press the T key to invoke the Type tool. Click on the stage to place the cursor and type some text onto it. Notice that when you added the text that Photoshop automatically added a new layer for it. (*note: To commit the text you can either press the Enter key on the 10-key corner of your standard keyboard or click the Check-Mark in the Text Tool options bar at the top of Photoshop.)
5
Now that our text is created and while we still have the Type tool chosen we need to create an outline path of the letters. Control-Click (PC: Right-Click) on the text on the stage and choose Create Work Path from the menu. This will create a white outline around each letter indicating that you’ve created a work path (obviously) which we will use later in the lesson to stitch around.
6
Add a new layer above your text by clicking the Add New Layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette or by using the keyboard shortcut Command-Option-Shift-N (PC: Ctrl-Alt-Shift-N). Rename the layer by Double-Clicking on the layers name in the Layers palette. I called this new layer Stitches.
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Now it’s time to setup everything in preparation for the stitching, and the first thing we need to do is load the stitching brush set into our Brushes palette. If you haven’t downloaded them yet you’ll want to do it now by clicking HERE. Save the brush set to your desktop or someplace you’ll remember when we go looking for them. Press the B key to invoke the Brush tool, then bring up the Brushes palette by choosing Window>Brushes from Photoshop’s main menu. In the upper right hand corner of the Brushes palette, click on the options icon and choose Load Brushes from the menu. Navigate to the brush stitches brush set that you just downloaded to your hard drive and click Load. You will then be asked if you want to Append the brushes to the end of your current brushes or if you want to replace the existing brushes by clicking OK. For my example I’m going to replace my existing brushes, but either option works fine.
8
Now that the brush set has been loaded into the Brush Picker lets go ahead and select the V-shaped brush. We’ll need to make a few adjustments to the settings in the Brushes palette for this brush to make it work the way we want. First off lets reduce the size of the brush to around 8 pixels in the Diameter setting then make sure the Spacing checkbox is checked and that the spacing is set to around 80%. The spacing change makes the V’s overlap enough to look like interlocking stitches.
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While still in the Brushes palette click down to the Shape Dynamics link on in the menu on the left and make sure that the Angle Jitter control is set to Direction. This will make the brush rotate as it goes around the corners to the different sides of our letters.
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At last it’s time to make the magic happen. Put on your wizard hat and swap the foreground and background colors by pressing the X key (white should now be showing as the foreground color at the bottom of the Tools palette). Press the P key to switch to the Pen tool and then Command-Click (PC: Right-Click) anywhere on that little white outline that is the Path around the text. Choose "Stroke Path" from the menu, make sure that "Brush" is selected from the drop-down menu and that the Simulate Pressure checkbox is un-checked then click OK. You’ll now see that the brush we chose has been used to stroke the entire path of the text. Since we’re done with the path now you can either click over to the Paths tab in the Layers palette and delete it, or simply press Command-H (PC: Ctrl-H) to hid it.
11
To make the stitches a little more realistic lets go ahead and add a few layer styles to the Stitches layer. Just like we did in Step #1 lets Command-Click (PC: Right-Click) on the Stitches layer and choose Blending Options. Now add a Drop Shadow and a Bevel and Emboss as shown below, be sure to check each setting to make sure you haven’t missed anything then click OK. The slight Bevel and Emboss will add a little more dimension to the thread while the Drop Shadow will add a touch of shading around the edges.
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Before we move on let me show you a cool little trick to change the background color. Since the background is a preset color pattern and not an overlay we can’t just change an underlying layer color so we have to resort to other methods. Click on the Background layer in the Layers palette to make it the active working layer. Now lets add an adjustment layer by clicking on the Create A New Fill or Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette (it’s the circle with half black and half white), choose Hue/Saturation and use these settings (or any that look pretty to you).
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The last little bit of adjustment I did was to click over to the Text layer in the Layers palette and change it’s Blend Mode to Multiply and it’s Fill opacity to 70%. By doing this we allow a little of the denim texture to come through onto our black letters adding a little depth and realism. (*note: You could also paste some real fabric into a layer above the Text layer and use a clipping mask to add even more coolness.)
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Anytime you’re using a text to create this effect you will always have an outline of the lettering, but what if you just want to stitch letters? Well, if you’ve got a little experience with the Pen tool you can apply this same technique to any number of paths you’ve drawn yourself. Below I’ve used the pen tool to draw some text.
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Then I switched to the Brush tool, lowered the diameter of the brush to 6 pixels, switched back to the Pen tool and Stroked the path just like we did back in Step 10. I then added the same Bevel & Emboss and Drop shadow to this new layer of stitches as we did to the original text.
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In my final image I simply embellished on the techniques we’ve learned. Check out the .PSD download to view all my final adjustments!

Changing Color

Open the document you want to change the color of. Remember to make a back up of the original.

Select the area of color that you wish to alter, in this case, the girl's T-Shirt. Use a combination of the Lasso and Extract tools.

To make an accurate selection, zoom in on the image, to about 800%, then select the polygonal lasso tool.

With the polygonal lasso tool, make your selection by clicking around the target's edges.

Continue clicking around the edges until you come back to the beginning to end the loop. If you have multiple area you want to select, then hold down SHIFT then start making another selection, this will add the next selection to your current one.

Dont worry too much if you accidently go outside or select unwanted area. We can fix this later.

Once you have your selection, zoom back to 100%.

Now click on the quick mask button, this is the right button located just below the colors.

Now you will see something similar to mine below, your selected area in normal colors, and the rest (un selected area) in transparent red. This is quick mask mode.

Now make sure your colors are set to black and white, select the "paint brush" tool and set the brush size to 13 hard edge.

Now if you "paint" over your image with BLACK, it adds to the selection, and if you paint in WHITE, it DELETE from the selection. with this in mind, zoom in on the image and find spots that you missed or are not accurate and paint accordingly.

if you look at my image below, my selection using the lasso tool was not perfect, so I use the brush tool now, and color in where I missed.

Tip: press "X" to change alternate the black and white colors.

If the brush size is too big, change it to smaller brush to get into tight areas. But remember to use hard edge brushes, as soft edge will give you inaccurate results.

This is how it look after I paint over the area with black.

Do this for your whole image to get accurate selection.

Once you think you're done, click on the NORMAL mode button (the LEFT button next to the quick mask mode).

This is how it should look now, a sharp accurate selection around my targetted area. If you see that you missed a spot, just go back to quick mask mode to fix it.

Now create a new Adjustment layer for Hue and Saturation.

Play around with the Hue and Saturation sliders to get the desired colors. You can also try turning on the colorize on and off to see the different effects.

The important thing to remember when changing tonal information is not to get too carried away - it's all too easy to lose shadow tones and the texture of the fabric. Subtle adjustments of the sliders will help retain the grain in the fabric as well as ensuring that shadows look realistic.

Another way to change color of the selection is using variations function Image->Adjustments->Variation.

This enables you to easily add shades of colour to highlights, midtones or shadows and is a useful means of creating new tones. Unfortunately, it lacks the subtlety of other methods.