Texturing in Adobe Photoshop: 5 Easy Techniques Using Filters

1. Introduction: Texturing is a great way to add more character and tangibility to digital images, and you can easily and quickly enhance the look of your work by taking advantage of the filters available in Adobe Photoshop. I am Gina from Attitude creative, and as a graphic designer, I cannot imagine my work without textures and my workflow, without smart filters, and the various effects they allow me to create. In this class, I'm excited to share with you five of my favorite techniques for texturing images in Adobe Photoshop using filters and without any additional materials. I will cover how to get the most out of a range of photo photoshop filters to create five different types of customizable textures. How to texture images non destructively using smart filters and smart objects, and how to take advantage of the neutral layers, blending modes, field and opacity settings, and blending options to fine tune the effects. This class is designed for everyone who uses a photoshop and wants to add a few new texture techniques to their creative toke. Whether you want to use textures to develop the apatic of your actual work or enhance the look of the previous or more cups you share online. I hope that in this class, you will pick up a few new tips and tricks, which will help you elevate your work and speed up your workflow. Grab some images you want to texture, and let's get started. 2. Document Settings & Recommendations: Before we start with the first texturing technique, here are a few important points to ensure that you get the best results and have the best possible learning experience whilst taking this class. First of all, the look of all of the following effects will differ depending on the size of the image you are working with. The larger the image, the more subtle the textures will be. I will be demonstrating all of the techniques using this relatively large image. And I would recommend applying the following effects to the images which are at least t fan pixels on the shorter side. And if you need them to be smaller for your final output, simply scale down the flattened textured images afterwards. But, of course, there can be exceptions, especially if you're after a very strong textured look. So just remember that the scale of most of the textures will be relative to the image size. So change it if required to create the desired look. If you are texture in large images, you won't be able to see the textures unless you viewed them at 100%, and you might need to zoom in even fielder to see the details. Next, even if you're creating your work foprint to be able to use photoshop filters, you will need to be in RGB color mode with eight bits per channel color depth. You can change these settings in the image menu here, so be sure to set your document up correctly. And when you're finished texturing, simply save a separate flattened copy in any desired format. And if required, convert it to CMYK there and then. Whilst texture you work, it is always best to work non destructively. So avoid applying any effects to raster image layers. In the following lesons, I will show you how to best use smart objects to texture work nondestructively, and to have more control and ability to easily and quickly adjust how the textures look. And the final quick note. Due to the nature of the class and techniques demonstrated, make sure you have the maximum play by quality selected in the player, which is ten 80 HD and have the video player large enough so you can actually see the textures in the videos. So with the basics covered, open some images you want to texture, and let's get started. 3. Film Grain: Let's start with the easiest and most versatile technique for adding a grain texture to your work. It involves adding film grain using the camera or filter, and it works perfectly with all sorts of images and offers you a lot of control over the intensity and scale of the grain and automatically blends the texture with your artwork. To apply the camera or filter to your work, it is best to convert all of the image layers you want to texture into a single smart object. So I'm going to select all my layers, group them together. Rename the group, and then convert it into a smart object. Even if you're working with a single image layer, be sure to convert it into a smart object to be able to texture your work no destructively and adjust how the texture looks at any time. When you have your smart object ready, select it and go to the filter menu and select camera or filter here. This will open the camera interface which is used to edit photographs in Adobe Photoshop. Here again, zoom in to 100%, so you can see the effect. And then go to the effect section, and then grain which you might need to expand by clicking on this arrow to be able to see the settings. Now, simply play around with the grain slider which controls the amount of the grain. And then adjust the size and roughness to your liking. As you can see the real time preview of the effect, it makes it very easy to find tune the look. So experiment with moving these ladders around and see what works for you. These settings will really depend on what sort of image you're working with. Is size and the effect you want to create. For my image, the sort of settings work pretty well, but you might want to use low grain amount and adjust the size depending on the size of your image and the level of detail in it. If you want to quickly compare the before and after, simply hit backslash to switch between the states. When you're happy with the look of your grain, hit okay in the camera window to return to the regular photoshop interface. The camera filter will be added as a smart filter to your smart object. And if you need to revisit it settings, simply double click on the filter's name here, which will take you back to the camera interface where you can further adjust the grain settings and then apply changes. If you're happy with the general look of the grain and its size, but wanted to appear less apk, double click on this icon to the right of the filter's name. This will open the blending options window for this filter, and here you can change its capacity to any desired value. For example, I will reduce mine to 60%. Compare the before and after. If you need to, and when you're happy with the look of the grain, hit K to apply its updated opacity value. And this is it for this effect. This is an incredibly easy and intuitive technique for texture work. So be sure to give it a try when editing photographs, creating digital collages, or any kind of artworks, designs or illustrations. 4. Paper Imitation: If you ever wanted to very quickly apply a subtle paper like texture to your work, the second effect is for you. It is not a replacement for texture in your work using scanned paper textures, but rather a quick and simple way of adding a little bit of tangibility to your digital work when preparing it for sharing digitally in presentations on social media, or in your portfolio as previews or mock ups. I'm going to carry on working with the same image. But you can apply this effect on its own to a new image if you want. And I'm going to quickly hide the previous texture so we can see the effect applied to the original image here. The same as the camera filter, this effect is best applied to a single smart object containing your entire artwork. So be sure to convert all your artwork layers into a single smart object before you proceed. When ready, start by selecting your smart object in the layers panel and go to the filter menu and select filter gallery. In the filter gallery window, go to the texture section and select texturizer. Make sure that it is the only filter here, and then go and set the texture to sandstone. I admit this is obviously not a paper texture, but it has a nice look similar to a rough paper. Check out how it looks at 100% in the preview window. And then go and adjust the scaling to your desired value in relation to the size of your artwork. Don't worry if you need to scale it above 100%, because when the texture is blended with the image, you won't notice it not being super sharp. But be careful about scaling it down to around 50% because the texture might start looking noticeably repetitive and also really tiny, which defeats the purpose of texturing the work in the first place. Because I'm working with a fairly large image. Even going up to 200% works okay, relatively to the elements in my image. But I'm going to make it a little smaller and set it to 175%. So play around with the scaling and see how the texture looks applied to your image. Apart from changing the scale of your texture, you can also adjust the relief setting here. Set its value to 1-3 to tune the depth of the texture. At the values higher dentre, this texture starts to look way to crisp and more stone like. So avoid going above three. Then you can quickly modify the lo of the texture by changing the light direction here. If you're not using any other effects in your work, which have a particular light direction, then simply play around and pick the variation you like. But if you have some other effects with an obvious light direction. For example, if you're creating a mock up and there are some shadows, then make sure that the light direction is consistent in all of the effects within your image. Apart from selecting the light direction, you can also try checking and checking the invert option here, which creates an alternative lo of the texture. So just all these settings to your king. And when ready, hit a K to apply changes. Check again how the texture looks when it is applied. And if necessary, double click on the filter gallery under your smart object in the layers panel. And revisit the settings of this filter. For example, I'll turn down the scale just a little. And apply changes. If you like the general look of the texture but want it to be subtle, you can also reduce its opacity. In order to do so, simply double click on the SCN for your filter gallery filters here, and turn it down in this dialogue. Preview the before and after. In a hit. Okay. You can adjust the of your texture as much as you want. For example, I'm going to go back to the filter gallery and reduce the relief value to have a slightly smoother texture. You can apply this effect on its own to imitate a light paper texture, or you can combine it with other texture techniques. For example, with the grain like this. These two effects together create a pretty decent and slightly more varied look of the texture. So consider using them together when creating previews of your work and quick print mock ups for sharing online. When using these two effects together, you can also swap the order in which they are applied to your work, which will produce slightly different results. Sandstone texture, both on its own or combined with the grain effect works with any kind of images. But it is particularly useful and apparent when working with the designs of artworks where there are large areas of solid and particularly not very dark colors. So make good use of it and take full advantage of its scaling relief and light direction settings to tune the look of your textures. 5. Digital Noise: Grain and paper textures are great and super versatile. But if you're integrating digital artworks designs, and particularly if you integradients, adding noise to your work will allow you to create a really cool grainy aphtic. Noise textures also introduce color variation to the JC and pixels, which is super useful if your work features gradients or large areas of solid colors, and it helps to reduce color bending and other issues, both on screen and in print. If you want to embrace a full on grain aesthetic, I would recommend applying the following effect to some gradient based artworks or designs or generally something looking pretty digital. But I'll carry on using this image here to show the versatility of the noise texture and to demonstrate how it can be used with various images in a more subtle way if desired. And I'm going to hide the previous two textures so we can start with the original untextured image. You can apply noise directly to the smart object with your entire artwork. But to have a few extra options for fine in the log, it is better to apply it to a separate layer and blend it with the artwork. So start by creating a new layer by pressing command shift on mark or control shift in windows to open the new layer setup dialogue. Rename the layer to noise. Then set mode to overlay. And check the t box, which says, fill with the overlay neutral color, 50% gray. And it a K to create your new layer. Make sure your new layer is above all of the artwork layers. And then right click on it and convert it into East Mart object. Then with your new noisert object layer selected. Go to the filter menu. Noise and select add noise. Set the amount to around 10% to start with. And check between the uniform and Gaussian and pick the one which works better with your image. I'm going to select Gaussian. Then check this box to create monochromatic noise. And apply changes. To change the strength of the noise, go to the layers panel and play around with the opacity of this layer to get the look to your lichen. The opacity value will depend on the colors in your work and the effect you want to create. For a more subtle look, consider using low noise opacity, somewhere around 50% or lower. And if you're after a really grainy look, keep it set to 100% or slightly less. To slightly change how the noise affects different tunnel areas in your image, you can also try using soft light blending mode instead of the overlay mode. So use the blending mode in combination with the opacity value to fine tune the look. If you want a little more or a little less noise, double click on the filter's name under the noise layer in the layers panel and change the amount to your lichen. And at this point, you can again quickly compare the look of the uniform noise versus Gaussian and change the setting if required, and apply changes. And that's the noise effect. When it is used subtly, it can be used as an alternative to the grain effect or combined with it or with other textures, or it can be used on its own in its full glory and 100% opacity. So play around with texture in your work using a separate noise layer, and remember that if one noise layer is not enough, you can always use multiple copies to make it even more noisy. 6. Organic Grain: Apart from adding irregular grain and noise to your work. You can also create a more organic look and grain using a combination of a couple of filters. This effect is great for adding a bit of tunnel variation to your work, and it helps to add more interest to solid color areas, making them look less flat. To start with the untextured image, I'm going to hide the noise texture we have created in the previous lesson. And we will be layering the new grain texture above the artwork in a similar way to this noise texture. So again, let's start by creating a new layer above the artwork. Press command shift on Mac or Control shift in the windows to open the new layer setup dialogue. In this case, rename New layer to grain. Again, set mode to overlay and check this box here. And with the setup ready, create your new layer. Again, make sure that your new layer is above all of the artwork layers and then convert it into a smart object. Next, press d to reset your foreground and background colors in the tools panel to black and white, respectively. And then with your new grain smart object layer selected in the layers panel, go to the filter menu and select filter gallery. Here, go to the texture section and select grain. You won't be able to see your image here because we're applying this filter to a neutral gray layer. So the preview will look like this to begin with. Make sure no other filters are applied at the same time, and you only see grain listed here. Then go to the grain type options and select step. Next, set the intensity to 50. And set contrast to 50 as well. This is a good starting point, and he will be able to adjust the intensity later if required. And now when the setting is ready, apply changes. After applying the stipled grain, you work in most cases, will start looking super grainy. So straightaway go and reduce the layer's opacity to the desired value. You might need to go pretty low, for example, two 10% to get the grain looking reasonable. But since we are still in the process of setting the effect up, just reduce it to the level where it looks more or less okay, but you can still see it. You can also try out different lending modes, for example, soft light for a more subtle look. Or experiment with hard light. Hard mix. Screen or multiply for alternative looks. I usually use soft light. To make it easier for you to see what is happening here, I'm going to increase the opacity of this layer two 50% for now. Next, let's develop the look of this grain further. You can actually use steple grain on its own, as well. And I usually use this effect to texture my gradient designs in Illustrator. But you can also use stippled grain as a basis for a more organic looking texture with rougher and more uneven grain shapes instead. And here is how you can do it. Select the grain layer in the layers panel and go to the filter menu. Other and select minimum. Set radius to 0.3 pixels. Set preserve to roundness and heat. With the high opacity values, this texture will make your image look darker or lighter, depending on the blending mode. So adjust the opacity to make the texture more subtle. In this case, 10% work well. After adding the minimum filter, you can also revisit the grain settings if you want you'll only see the grain preview here and not the effect of the minimum filter. So just experiment with changing the intensity, try out different values and apply changes to see how it affects the look of the final texture. And then repeat the process to check out other intensity values. For example, I'll set it to 75 and apply changes. This looks good to me, but be sure to play around with the intensity as much as you need to get the texture to your liking. If you want to quickly create an alternative inverted texture, select your grain layer and hit to add the invert filter. And if you're using overlay or soft light bending mode, you will get the darker grain shapes instead. If you like this look, be sure to further adjust the opacity of this layer to make the grain more or less visible. Invert filter is a great texture modifier to have at your disposal. So you can keep it here and hide or show it to create the desired effect. Play around with the blending modes opacity and the grain intensity setting in the filter gallery and add some nice organic grainy textures to your work. This texture works pretty well on its own, or it can be combined with other textures, for example, noise, which in this case, we need to be a little bit more subtle. And together, these two textures will add motonal variation to your work. Or you can also add the sensetone texture to the mix, and these three effects together will create a pretty decent paper effect, which can be used to texture any kind of images. 7. Organic Fibers: The last texture technique I'm going to show you can be used for creating stricky or fiber like textures, which are great for adding a slight to variation to your work and particularly good for any graphics with areas of solid colors, which you want to look less flat. Again, I'm going to quickly hide all of the previous effects. And add this texture on top of the original untextured image. We will be creating this texture using a separate layer yet again. So start by opening the new layer setup dialogue. And rename your new layer to fibers. We're going to be using a different blending technique. So set mode to difference, and check this option here, which in this case, we'll say fill with difference neutral color black, and create your new layer. As usual, make sure your new layer is above all of the artwork layers and then convert it into a smart object. Then make sure your new layer is selected in the layers panel. And press D to reset your foreground and background colors in the tools panel to black and white respectively. And then go to the filter menu. Render and select fibers. Here, play around with the variance and strength sliders whilst looking at the preview to create the kind of texture you like. You can create a lot of different texture variations using different value combinations here. And of course, you can revisit these settings at any time as well. I would recommend starting with the strength set to ten and variance set to about 50 to create this kind of rough uneven texture. But in any case, you will need to apply your texture and see how it works with your image and then customize it further. Here, you can also hit the Rondome button, which will re render the texture with the same settings. And this is critical because it allows you to have unique textures applied to your various works, so it won't look like you're adding exactly the same texture over and over again. So with this kind of settings ready, go ahead and apply changes. At this point, everything will look pretty weird and inverted. And this is because we are using the difference mode at its full strength. So as soon as you apply the fibers filter, go to the feel value of your fibers texture layer and reduce it down to about five to 10%. When working with the difference mode, opacity and fill settings will have a different effect. So use the fill value to control the strength of the blending effect and use the opacity. If you need to make the texture look more translucent. So you'll need to use these two settings in combination with each other to create the desired effect. I like subtle textures. So 5% fill and about 30 to 70% opacity usually work well for me. But don't hesitate to play around if you want to have a stronger or even more subtle texture. After you have settled on the settings, open the applied fibers filter and adjust the look of your texture using the sliders. You need to apply your new settings to see the updated texture over your artwork. So go through this process of changing the settings and applying changes as many times as required to land on the texture you like. And don't forget to hit randomize if you want to render the texture. In this case, I like this look of the fibers, so I will stop here. You can use the fibers texture as it is. But you can also add a little bit of noise to it to make it look more varied. To be able to better see the changes, I am going to increase the opacity back to 100% for now. And then let's select the fibers layer and go to the filter, menu. Noise and select the familiar add noise filter. In this case, set the amount to about 50%. And you'll straightway, see the change in the texture. Next, select uniform. Check the monochromatic box. And hit. Okay. You can leave it as it is. But I usually go to the blending options of the add noise filter and bring down its opacity to make the noise a little more subtle. About 70% works pretty well. And here's before and after. So, change the opacity of the noise to your liking and apply changes. You will see the subtle difference between just the fibers texture and after adding the noise. So if you like the look, keep it in mind as well. And of course, remember that you can change the amount of noise to your liking. And together with the settings of the fibers filter and the noise opacity, this will give you plenty of room for customizing this texture. With my effect set up. Now I'm going to quickly reduce the opacity of this texture and actually go as low as 55%. So there is some texture, but it is not too obvious. So play around with applying the fibrous texture to your work. Don't forget to render the texture using the randomized button particularly when applying it to multiple artworks and adjusted settings to customize the look. Like the rest of the textures, this texture can be used on its own, but it looks even better when combined with other textures. So be sure to play around with different combinations. And when using it together with other textures, you almost likely need to further adjust the fibrous texture opacity and potentially feel to make it more visible. 8. Blend If...: When working with separate texture layers, you can also further adjust how much texture is visible in the lighter and darker areas of your artwork. For example, I am going to quickly hide these two effects here. And let's have a look at how you can adjust the visibility of the texture across different tonal areas, using the fibers texture as an example. But it will work the same way for the noise and grain effect as well. For better visibility, I will increase this layer's opacity back to 100%. And let's find a good area to preview, which has a range of tones in it. So if you don't want to have the same amount of texture across all tonal areas, simply right click on your separate texture layer and open the Blending Options dialogue. Here in the main blending option section, go to the Blend If settings. Make sure gray is selected here, and then go and play around with the slider for the underlying layer. In order to have less texture in the lighter areas, you'll need to work with the white indicator here. So hold down the old or option key and drag the left side of this indicator sideways. This will split the indicator into two parts, and it will allow you to gradually reduce the visibility of your texture in the lighter areas in your image. So move this part of the indicator around to create the desired look. You can also create a gradual transition in the darker areas. So if you want, split the black indicator in two the same way and adjust the position of its right part. But in most cases, you would probably want to only adjust the lighter areas and keep all the texture you can get in the darker ones. But of course it will depend on what sort of texture you are working with and the blending mode you are using. So adjust the blend settings when and if required. And when you're happy with a look, apply changes. And if you need to tweak the blend settings again, simply double click on the second here and adjust them. If you have changed the texture opacity before applying the blend v settings like I have done here, don't forget to change it back to the desired level. So use the blend If settings to adjust how your textures look in different tonal areas of your work and experiment with applying to the fibers texture, as well as noise and grain or really any other kind of texture contained on a separate layer. 9. Final Thoughts & Class Project: So that's it for this class. I hope that you have enjoyed it and picked up a few new tips and tricks for effortlessly texturing your work and working smart whilst doing so. As shown in this class, you can use these effects to texture your entire artworks, designs or illustrations, and you can mix different effects together to create more exciting and varied textures. And if you're working on some graphic which requires using different textures for different elements. For example, when creating print more cups from scratch, like in the example here, you can also consider clapping some of your textures to the individual layers and using multiple textures to build a complex texturing effect. You can apply all these textures manually every time. You need them. But if you want to speed up your workflow, you can create a few actions to be able to apply any of these textures in just a few clicks. If you need some tips for creating this sort of actions, be sure to watch the bonus video in this class. And if you're feeling lazy, don't hesitate to grab a free download of a set of my favorite texture actions from our website and have fun using them to texture your work. I will be super excited to see how you use any of the techniques I have shared in this class to texture work and hear about your experience. So be sure to post your texture experiments in the projects and resource tab for this class and share both your untextured and final textured images and tell us which technique or techniques you have used and what's your favorite. And if you're going to share your work on Instagram, please tag us at attitude creative in your posts so we can easily discover them and share your work with our followers. If you want to learn some more advanced techniques for creating different graphic effects in Audob photoshop, be sure to check out our Adobphotoshop effects classes, which you can find on our profile. And be sure to follow us here on Skillshare, to be the first to know about our new classes and updates. If you have found this class helpful, please leave a review in the review tab for this class. And if you have any sort of questions, be sure to leave a comment in the discussion tab for this class, and I'll happily answer and provide feedback. Thank you for watching this class, and I hope to see you in our other classes. 10. Bonus: Creating Texturing Actions: To speed up your workflow, you can consider creating a set of actions, which will allow you to apply any of these texture and effects with your specified settings in just a few clicks. You can record your actions in any document you want, but to avoid confusion, I would recommend to avoid doing it in some artwork file where you have multiple layers and other textures already. But that said, I will carry on working in this document, because in my case, it is simply used for demo, and I have the final textured artwork elsewhere. Before we start recording your actions, I would also highly recommend experimenting with different effects and writing down the settings which allow you to create different textures you like. When you sit down to record your actions, all you need to do is input the correct settings and not add any unnecessary steps to your actions. To create a new action, start by going to the actions panel, and if it is not open, go to the window menu and select it here. In the actions panel, create a new set to keep your actions organized. Be sure to rename your new set and hit. Then select the set in the actions panel, and create your first action by clicking on this button. Give your action a clear name. I will be creating an action which will create a grain effect. So I'm going to call my action organic grain. You can also add some description specify in some settings. For example, the intensity of the grain in this case. But I'll keep it just like this for this demo, and he re. Whilst recording your actions, make sure you do not select any layers manually because it will make your actions rely on specific layer names. In this case, it is best to record actions without any layer selection at all. And when you want to run your action, you simply need to select any layer you want to apply your texture on top of or select the smart object you want to apply the texture to directly. In case of using camera or grain or texturizer filters. So keep an eye on what you can see in the actions panel whiles to record in your action and start setting up the desired effect. In this case, the first step will be to open a new layer dialogue and set up a new layer. And this is exactly the same process. I have shown you in the lessons in the class. So make sure to rename your new layer. Select the required blending mode, Overlay in this case. Check this box to create a neutral gray fiel, and create a new layer. Then right away, click on your newly created layer and convert it into a smart object. The next step we used when creating this texture was to press D to reset the foreground and background colors. You will see the step pop up here. Then go to the filter menu Open the filter gallery. Add the grain filter, set it to Stip Okay. And input the desired settings here and apply changes. Then go to the filter menu again. Go to other and select minimum. Use these settings here and apply this filter. And then go and change these layers blending mode and opacity in one action each. So be sure to make up your mind before you click anywhere to keep your action tidy. I'm going to set the blending mode to soft light and opacity to 20%. So with this sort of filters applied to your work and a couple of steps for changing the blending mode and opacity. Your action should look like this in the actions panel. And if you want to add a blending step, you can record it as well. So open the blending options for your texture layer. Make any desired changes here and hit. When you're finished, double check all of the steps in the actions panel and stop recording your action. And here's your action ready. To run this action, simply select it here. Select the layer on top of which you want to apply it in your document. For example, I am going to hide all these texture layers and select the smart object with my artwork to create this texture directly on top of it. After selecting the layer, all you have to do is hit the play button in the actions panel and wait for your texture to be created. So, set up as many textuan actions as you like to easily create different textures and don't hesitate to download my favorite textual actions and play around with using them in your work.