Create Realistic Wood Texture in 7 Steps

Creating your own personalized textures makes working in Photoshop so much easier, because you have fuller texture library that you can refer to similar projects in the future. The advantage of making your own textures rather than downloading or purchasing them is that you can customize them more, and because you’re using random filters you can experiment and apply them as many times as you like until you’re happy with the result.

There are multiple types of surface texture you can create, but one that’s fairly commonly required is the wood texture.

The possibilities are never ending, so begin creating some exciting new addition to your texture library by simply following my step-by-step Photoshop tutorial.

Step 1

Open photoshop and create a new document 3000 by 3000 pixels with a resolution of 300 ppi. Create new layer and call this layer ’1st fibers’. Ensure your foreground color is black and your background color is white by hitting the D. Fill the ’1st fibers’ layer with foreground color then go to Filter > Render > Fibers, enter 1 in the Variance and the Strength box. Create a visible wood texture by hitting Randomize until a light texture shows in the preview window.

Step 2

Now we add color to our texture, double clicks ’1st fibers’ to bring up Layer Style window, pick Color Overlay. Set the blend mode to Linear Burn, click the color swatch in the Layer Style window, enter #d2af5a.

Step 3

In the main window click on the swatch for the foreground color to bring up the color picker and enter #be822d. Do this also for background, but for background enter #dcaf28. The Fibers filter needs some color to work with when creating the effect.

Create a new layer called ’2nd fibers’ and set its blending mode to Multiply. Fill this layer with foreground color using Paint Bucket Tool (G). Go to Filter > Render > Fibers. Set your Variance to 7 and Strength to 50. If the grain is too dark, in the preview window press the Randomize button until a lighter shade is displayed.

Step 4

Add a new layer and call it ‘grain’, set the blending mode of the layer to Multiply. Select Edit > Fill and from the Use menu that appear choose White and select Multiply from the Mode menu. Press OK to fill the layer with white.

Step 5

Press D to turn back your foreground/background black/white. Go to Filter > Render > Fibers, enter 1 in the Variance box, 50 in the Strength box and use Randomize to find a light effect.

Step 6

Add noise via Filter > Noise > Add Noise, enter 35% value and check Monochromatic box.

Step 7

Select all layer and hit Ctrl+E to merge them together. To make our textures horizontal go to Image > Image Rotation > 90 CCW.

Give your wood a realistic feel by adding knots. With the merged layer selected go to Filter > Liquify. To see your wood texture, check Show Backdrop in the view option and raise the Opacity to 60. Select the Forward Warp Tool (W) and push out either side of a point along the grain, creating a knot. Zoom in to see the effect more clearly. Vary the size of the knots using different sized brush or sweep along the grain with the Twirl Clockwise Tool (C) on a low brush pressure.

Final Result

You can achieve many types of grain by changing the overlay color for the ’1st fibers’ layer or altering the setting for the Fibers filter.Try setting the ‘grain’ layer to a different mode or lowering its Opacity. Now you can create your own textures or if you want, you can download the original size of my wood textures by clicking image below. Don’t forget subscribe to Grafisia RSS feed or simply share this tutorial to your friends.