Creating Seamless Textures in Photoshop for Second Life

Tired of paying for textures? Why not make your own? This is how to do it using Adobe Photoshop.

Have you ever found a texture you love, but then when you try to tile the pattern it looks plain awful? When textures are created seamlessly you can pick them out pretty quickly by the distinctive lines and mismatch of edges.

It is recommended that you stick with 256 x 256 pixels or 512 x 512 at the largest for a texture unless you have the need to have very high resolution images. (The higher the resolution, the longer the texture will take to rez in)

Ok here we go, with the image open in Photoshop:
Filter -> Other -> Offset
You have the option of playing with both the horizontal and vertical positioning using the blue sliders. Be sure that the “Wrap Around” option is selected. If this is your first time trying this out, halve the original size of your texture. So, if you had a 512 x 512, use the values of 256 x 256, or if you had a 256 x 256, use the values of 128 x 128.

Now here comes the fun part. There are spots where Photoshop overlapped the pattern for me to create the tile, but I do not care for the change in color that I can see on some of the stones. Also, there are places where the weeds coming through the cracks are cut off. I will work on the portion of the image shown here first from the upper right corner.

The clone stamp is one my favorite tools, and should do the trick here. The clone stamp picks up information from a designated area in the image and “stamps” it where you click with the mouse.

Find a spot on the stone (or the texture that you are using) and use either Option on a mac or Alt on windows click on a spot in the image to pick up image information. i am going to clone a bit of the weed to get rid of that straight line. with OPtion or Alt I clicked on to the green part of the weed. You will want to play with brush size here, I am keeping it pretty small. If you have done this correctly when you click the cursor will change to a small target symbol.

Start with small individual clicks rather than trying to “draw” the information in with one motion.

This takes a little practice, but it is worth persevering!
So after a little work this is the same area with our created weeds. Use the same steps to cover all of the apparent lines. The reason we need to take these steps is that Photoshop is smart enough to figure out how to make the outer edge work together to create a good pattern, but we need to do a little detailing on the inside to make it believable. Some textures will not even need any stamping to use.

Lets see the before and after using the clone stamp:

The distinct line down the center is now gone.

You have just created a seamless texture. Save the file, preferably for web, if you do not need a high resolution image, and upload the texture into Second Life. I like the idea of $10L for a texture that I can use over and over again, and I know that it will be unique.

TIP: While you still have the seamless texture up in Photoshop, you can save this as a “defined pattern” to use again and again in Photoshop. Do this by going to:
Edit -> Define Pattern and name the texture. This way if you have a shape or background that you would like to fill with your pattern, you will always have it available under Edit -> Fill
Choose your pattern from the drop down menu, and voila!

I hope you find this helpful!