Jun 11th by Andrew Houle | stashed in Design & Drawing
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…
- Bring up Photoshop and create a new document at a size that you like. I used 500px by 500px
- 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
- 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.
- Go to the toolbar at the top and click filter->render->clouds. This will give us a nice base to work from.
- 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.)
- Add a gaussian blur to the dirt layer. Click filter->blur->gaussian blur. Set the radius to 0.9 pixels.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.”
- 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.
- 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.
- Blur the grass layer. Click filter->blur->gaussian blur. Change the radius to 0.9 pixels, click OK.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Now flip the image so the grass looks verticle. Click image->rotate canvas->90 CCW. Below is what I’ve got so far…
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Add noise to the lines. Click filter->noise->add noise. I used 11% for the amount.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- 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’.
- Add a layer mask to the ‘Field’ layer, by clicking the mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette.
- 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).
- 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.
- 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 :))
- 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.
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June 13, 2008
Wowzers this is a badass grass effect.
June 13, 2008
A very good and useful tutorial.very easy …quick
Thanks for such a nice tutorial
June 13, 2008
I am very much impressed to see all the detail you give. I used to make grass only by using the grass brush, but your tutorial is very different. I appreciate your wonderful work and tutorial. Thank you very much
Vijay Parmar
June 13, 2008
Very nice effect. I will give it a try on the weekend – thank you :)
June 13, 2008
I’m not entirely sure why you’ve given a shadow to the white layers..
Is the paint embevelled into the grass when it’s painted on?
:|
June 13, 2008
I used the shadows on the lines to help with depth and character, I tried to keep it subtle, however it’s a fair point that the lines would not be at a level below the top of the grass blades. That step very well could be omitted.
June 13, 2008
Wow…
Awesome Tut!
Simply Love it
Here’s my Try!!
http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc299/shaker_rosh/grass.jpg
June 13, 2008
Cool Tutorial! Mine came out pretty close to yours! Anyway I have a hint to draw straight lines with the paintbrush tool.
Select the brush you want and click the beginning point of the line. Then hold down the Shift key and click again at the point where you want to end the line. This will draw a straight line with the paintbrush tool. Hope that makes sense.(learned that trick on another tutorial)
Thanks again.
June 13, 2008
I should know that :) Thanks for the tip.
June 14, 2008
Hey thanks alot for this I really like this
June 14, 2008
Wow, that look pretty cool, thx for it.
June 14, 2008
Ecellent!! detail steps given are really very helpful. Thanks alot!!!!
June 16, 2008
Congratulations and much thanks, this is the best grass effect I’ve ever seen and really well explained. Awesome !
June 17, 2008
very well written!!
very nice too.
:)
June 17, 2008
Nice tutorial!
June 17, 2008
Great tutorial. Love the finished article!
June 18, 2008
omg, nice tuto, really great
June 22, 2008
Very nice & realistic outcome. Good job!
June 27, 2008
a very nice tutorial, tnks so much!!!!
June 28, 2008
Great tut except for the white lines..
They shouldn’t need the shadow and should have just been overlayed on the grass bg.
June 30, 2008
thanks
June 30, 2008
Awesome! thanks. I never thought it can be made from scratch
July 8, 2008
I have one problem with this…..everything starts good,but …under the field image-adjustments– hue/saturation IS NOT AVAILIBLE
How can I turn on it?????
This is very very nice tutorials
July 8, 2008
Sanya,
The most likely reason this option is disabled is that your document is in grayscale. Try clicking Image->Mode->RGB Color. I hope this helps.
July 8, 2008
Hey Andrew, thank you very much.It works…:))))))))))
Have a great day or night wherever you are….
July 11, 2008
sadly, i did the horrible misstake to remove my lines and after that the 50, cause i tought it would be too much to do if i would keep them.
So now, i’d geuss i have to make it over again:(
btw,nice tutorials.
I’ll test this one and more tomorrow,good night:D
July 11, 2008
Hi Beginnah,
Sorry to hear you have to start again. (We’ve all been there). Glad you like the tutorials!
July 12, 2008
Wihoo!Done it now:DD
Ended up pretty nice, altough i messed up the lightning effects a bit.
July 13, 2008
Super happy with this tutorial. Interesting the effect that rotating the canvas and re-blasting it with wind. Not really what I expected to happen at all!
Here’s my application of this tutorial (a new blog layout) mixed with some other textures : http://keepthewebweird.com/images/non-site/listotron-concept.jpg
Thanks so much!
July 13, 2008
Hi Buck,
I love the concept of using the grass texture as a web background. Glad you put the tutorial to good use!
July 21, 2008
That is pretty cool! I don’t know what purpose I’d have in actually knowing how to make grass in photoshop, but it’s still fun to play with. Nice tutorial!
July 25, 2008
A very good & Interesting Tutorial.I Enjoyed it.
July 29, 2008
Very nice tutorial. And VERY good explained!
August 5, 2008
will try it out when am free.but i must say its nice.
August 10, 2008
Great tutorial! This tutorial is explained incredibly well which makes it easy. I wish more tutorials are like this… Thanks
August 10, 2008
I’m enjoying your tutorials, but I do have one problem. I’m using PSP Pro X2 and I don’t have a filter selection to do the wind, blur, clouds, and noise effects. Luckily, I located the noise and blur effects. Then wind effect I’ve found is under artistic effects, but it is not the same. I was wondering if you’ve had an alternative to the cloud and wind for X2 users.
August 11, 2008
A quick thanks to everyone who commented and enjoyed the tutorial.
JSM, I don’t have PSP Pro installed on any of my computers, so unfortunately I can’t be much help. If anyone reading this has an idea of a sub for the cloud and wind effects please post a comment.
August 11, 2008
Thanks, eventhough it’s a different program, I am able to get a nice looking texture from the technics you show. I just can’t get the quality I see in your pictures. I hate to go out and buy another program right now. I’ve made 3 of my own textures now, by starting out with your technics then I experiment from there. Thanks again.
August 25, 2008
Thanks for this! I was desperately looking for a good aerial image of a football field, but couldn’t find anything that would work. Great job, and very thorough and easy to understand instructions!
August 25, 2008
Here’s my finished product – you saved my butt! The ad I’m making is going to be ugly (thanks, client) but I love the techniques you taught me. http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i269/wanderingsun/footballfield.jpg
August 25, 2008
Hi Jo,
No problem! I’m glad you found a cool use for this. The field looks great! I also had someone use this technique to make grass in a picture of a real estate listing she had. Good stuff!
September 13, 2008
nice tutorial, thanks so much!
October 4, 2008
nice tutorial man… i hv learned a lot from this.. keep it up !
October 7, 2008
Awesome Effects dear
October 23, 2008
wow, this is great,
i really like this effect.
the tutorial is so easy to follow
awesome job :)
October 23, 2008
If you want straight lines with the brush then click once where you want your brush line to start.. let go of the mouse button, move the mouse to where you want your line to end.. and holding Shift, click the mouse once again, and it will draw you a nice straight line :)
Here’s my effort anyway.. cheers for the tut!
T.
October 24, 2008
Totally amazing and fantastic! One of the best tuts I’ve seen around!
November 24, 2008
oh my god, Awesome !!
Thats what im looking for
thanks
December 15, 2008
how about some soil/dirt to go with that grass do you have a tut for that
December 15, 2008
@beatz the first few steps of this tut are about making a dirt background. I would add a little more if that was all I was making, but it should give you a nice starting point.
December 25, 2008
Thanks,this beuty share.
January 6, 2009
just the grass effect is so great!
thanks
January 8, 2009
great work will be usefull in many games for the beginners. i ll give 4/5
January 26, 2009
This is so cool, it’s bookmark worthy.
February 10, 2009
Very very good tootorial.
Thanks…
February 13, 2009
wow, this is great,
February 17, 2009
Wow this is by far the best Grass tutorial I’ve ever seen–thanks for the nice work.
March 4, 2009
This is sweet, I wish I would have found this site earlier, so much great stuff. I never new you could make this kind of thing.
March 16, 2009
its very nice wonderfull grassfull
April 15, 2009
Great tutorial for a beginning photoshopper like me…
Only missed the required dpi (300?) and color mode (RGB/CMYK) in the beginning!
Anyone knows how to be able to make this into a pattern that connects seamless in bigger area’s?
Greetzz
Dennis
April 15, 2009
@Dennis – Check out “How to Seamlessly Tile a Background” for help with that: http://www.myinkblog.com/2008/06/16/how-to-seamlessly-tile-a-graphic/
April 15, 2009
Ahh tnx very much!
I’m doin urban planning drawings and they are going to be very nice!
Greetz from Rotterdam!
April 16, 2009
Great tutorial! Thanks (:
April 16, 2009
nice, really nice!
April 19, 2009
Great, thanks!
April 26, 2009
You have received a lot of ‘thanks’ comments from June 2008 until this month of April 2009 and this doesn’t seem to stop. Another 2 months and it’s the 1st anniversary for all the ‘thanks’ and comments for this tutorial. So here’s another thanks from me… Good job.
April 28, 2009
AWESOME DUDE @w@ thats like maaagic
May 2, 2009
Thanks a lot for this awesome tutorial! its really going to help me!
May 19, 2009
I know everyone has said it already, but thank you for the tutorial. I never realized the power of the filters within Photoshop. I’m probably still wasting Master Collection CS4, but this makes me feel a little more productive.
Thought you might like this one. Tiles for an upcoming website: Grass and dirt with stone edging
Thanks again
May 19, 2009
@Jeff – Nice work, thanks for sharing!
May 25, 2009
wow, great! Thanks!
May 28, 2009
Here is what I did: http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/7531/rendergrass.jpg
I do not know if it is realistic. But it is beautiful.
May 28, 2009
@Stenionet – Cool rendering, thanks for sharing :)
June 4, 2009
I love it..! I’m using it for a Halo 2 map. Thanks a bunch!
July 3, 2009
nice tutorial! helpful! keep it up! cheers from greece!
July 5, 2009
Sweet tut, i’ll use it for an overgrowth level i’m making
July 6, 2009
awesome just what i was looking for!
July 7, 2009
Great Post!
July 12, 2009
Great tutorial. I’ve found that adding some extra wind with different rotations makes a nice random look.
I intended on using this just for a grass texture for a game, but I’m thinking about using it for other things as well. It looks great with a little specularity and normal mapping in games.
July 18, 2009
I enjoeyd this tutorial, I am programming a game and I am going to use this technique, thank you very much,.
July 19, 2009
Hey very nice Tut.. in the end you could add a new layer where you dodge and burn a little bit!
July 28, 2009
Simple but very beautiful!
August 4, 2009
Wow this is an extremely creative design! And a very good use of filters. :P Thanks so much for sharing!! ~ZeroGrafics
August 5, 2009
Very nice introduction,thank you.
August 6, 2009
Awesome tutorial, thanks. I’ll be letting my students know about this one and put it with my faves on my blog.
.-= Dominique´s last blog ..Branding and Corporate Identity Guidelines =-.
August 11, 2009
WOW! Fantastic! At first I thought this was a picture of an actually grass field.
Very realistic. Great results.
And thank you for sharing! :D
August 11, 2009
Wow! Very cool.
August 16, 2009
Awesome!
Thanks…
.-= Elpidio Garza´s last blog ..Publicidad de Las Vegas – Chinchilli Day =-.
August 19, 2009
I’ve found the tutorial extremely easy to follow, but I’m not getting quite the same effect on my final product. I’m using CS1.
I seem to be going off track around step 10 – ctrl backspace doesn’t seem to be a key command for CS1, so I’m manually going into the Layer menu and selecting “Solid Color…” under Fill Layer. Does this affect the end product at all? It looks OK, just a bit muddy and with much shorter/less defined blades of “grass.”
I appreciate any help.
August 24, 2009
Some little things regarding the line drawing section…
1) I found it easier to draw the yard lines straight-on (running vertically & horizontally…I even added a few hash-marks) using guidelines to keep everything the proper distance. Once it looks the way I want it, I rotate the whole layer to the angle desired (saves a lot of time trying to get the yard lines to be perpendicular & parallel to each other).
2) You could just as easily merge the text layer to the lines layer…THEN make all the overlay options (noise & shadow options). That saves the trouble of having to do it all twice.
3) For a bit more realism, the yardline should bisect the number, with “5″ on one side & “0″ on the other. Doesn’t matter one way or the other….just looks more like an actual field.
Great job! I’m going to use this to create a background for my College Football Fantasy League this year.
August 25, 2009
Awesome!
this is fantastic
September 4, 2009
Cool toot dude … I wish I’d seen this a month ago, it would have saved me a whole world of grief!!
September 7, 2009
Nice and handy tutorial on creating textures in Photoshop. This tutorial so easy to learn and implement , Thnak
September 9, 2009
this, very thank you..
Your site full professional and very beautiful…
October 22, 2009
This was a very educational tutorial. For once, I found it easy to follow and I actually understood why certain things were done. Thanks for the learning! Kudos.
October 22, 2009
what font did you use for the “50?”
October 23, 2009
Nevermind, I see it
November 3, 2009
WOW, that is a cool tutorial.
November 20, 2009
very nice work
November 21, 2009
thank you
it really help me a lot . like other user said its magic
best of tuto
November 23, 2009
OMG OMG OMG Andrew Houle you look great !! tnx for this, I really need this for my 3d landscape model. Keep ti coming
November 24, 2009
I have only to say GREAT TUTORIAL!
thanx for sharing :)
December 2, 2009
Thanks so much for this tutorial. Let me show you what I created with your inspiration:
http://i925.photobucket.com/albums/ad95/FireballLLC/Fireball_Field.jpg
Thanks,
Will
December 6, 2009
Excellent post. A must read for anyone that uses photoshop regularly
December 25, 2009
Nice tutorial, thanks
December 28, 2009
Excellent , Brilliant, simple …. If all the tuto were like this one !!!
100000 thanks
December 30, 2009
This is the best grass tutorial I’ve seen that looks like grass. Thanks!
January 7, 2010
Excellent! One of the best…the tehnique for grass texture is great!
thanks
January 11, 2010
hey thanks for the tutorial XD
execelent!! and very helpful
keep it the good work =)
January 20, 2010
cool tutorial, I’ve been looking for some realistic grass tuts and I’m very grateful for this… thanks…
January 23, 2010
In step #10 I had to use ALT not CTRL to fill the grass layer with green. Is that a typo in the instructions or is my Photoshop program acting weird?