Introduction:
This tutorial is geared toward beginners or anyone looking for new workflows. It is a simple way to control values structures and is often used as a starting point in many of my textures now. Being my first texture tutorial, I will be getting talking pretty in depth about my brand of workflow and organization as well. Enjoy!
Key:
Hotkey
Layer Name
Link
Tool, Command or Action
Resources:
For this tutorial I am using a painted wood texture from Mayang's Free Texture Website. I chose this texture for it's differences in surface properties and height levels. Download links are below for texture and example files.
- I will also be referencing the use of some actions that I use all of the time. These are also available as a download from my download section.
Right Click and Save Target As:
Texture Download
Example PSD File
Process:
1.) PSD Prep: Start by opening the texture file and duplicating the background layer. I usually rename this one to "Original" and stick it inside a new group that is named according the desired output type; Like COLOR, or NORMAL. I know I want to make a normal map for this texture so I will usually start with that. The specular map can be made after by copying and modifying any of the height map layers.
2.) Adjustment Layers: Create a new Channel Mixer Adjustment Layer from the bottom of the Layers Palette. I use adjustment layers and snapshots as much as possible for flexibility sake. I will be talking about how I use my snapshot action later in this tutorial. The more adjustments I can make to a texture that are isolated and non-destructive, the easier I can make adjustments later on.
3.) The Cannel Mixer: Check the option box for monochrome, you should see 40% red, 40% green and 20% blue by default. The resulting image is almost what you get when you de-saturate your image ( ctrl+shft+u ). You can mix in different amounts of each channel to create a much richer black and white photo, or to separate values for use in texture production. To maintain the overall brightness of the image, you want to keep the channel percentage total at 100. But for now, we aren't going to be paying much attention to that total. What we want to accomplish with the channel mixer here is simply to separate the surface types according to their height through clear separation of value. The wood parts represent valleys and the paint the peaks. If you are working on a complicated texture it may be helpful to draw yourself a quick little diagram of the surface composition.
4.) Settings: The settings I chose to start are: 100% of the red channel, +60% of the green channel, and -110 of the blue channel. Dropping the blue channel significantly really separates the wood from the paint. Mixing in more of the green channel helps to separate the wood from the deep cracks and shadows, and mixing in the red channel raises the contrast of the image to what I think is a good starting point.
5.) Defining the Value Range: Now I'm going to create a Curves Adjustment Layer. What I want to do here is to redistribute those values a little by dropping the mid-tones in order to create a little more separation detail between the surface elements.
- I want to pay attention to my Histogram up in the info palette. Notice that I'm not using my full range of values yet. They peak at about 180 and disappear at about 210. That's ok, in fact that's good, because I am going to want to add a little bit of height back in for subtle surface details; Much like you would heighten a drawing on toned paper with a little bit of white charcoal.
6.) Surface Debris Mask: Now we want to make that little extra bit of surface debris on top of the paint. The plan is to end up with a Surface Debris Layer with a layer mask. But to get one we are going to have to do a few things first.
- Start off by taking a snapshot of everything we have made so far and name it MaskSnap. I have an action in my download section that will take snapshots of all visible layers in a canvas.
- Place the new snapshot inside of a new Group called "Debris_MaskSource", and set their layer display colors to red. This is so that we know that this particular group is not part of the final image composite, rather it is a source asset for a layer above it. Conversely, anything that has it's layer display color set to green will be part of the final image composite.
- Create a new Levels Adjustment Layer just above the layer Debris_MaskSource, and name it "MaskLevels". This is going to be the layer mask for the debris layer, so we want keep the blending confined to the paint surfaces. Drag up the mid-tone slider to about 0.18 to darken the wood areas. Drag the white-point slider to the left to about 208 in order to increase the contrast in the paint areas.
- As with most image editing, be careful not to crush any values here. We want to retain as much of the contrast within the defined value range as possible. For photo manipulation or realistic texture production, crushing values is generally a very good thing to avoid, and usually produces flat, undesirable results or inappropriate lighting. I am always keeping this in mind when evaluating my blending and adjustment layers.
