How to create Tileable textures in Photoshop?

Detailed guide to create Tileable textures in Photoshop within few easy steps.

Hi, this tutorial will show you how to create tileable textures in Photoshop. Let’s first discuss why we need tileable textures. Well, if you are a 3d artist, you already know the importance of tileable textures. Sometimes textures start giving seams due to the unmatched pixel information from edges. Using those textures in projects gives very weird results so we have to fix those seams to avoid all those problems and if we use tileable textures, they tile perfectly without giving seams and give better results.


Step1

tileable textures in photoshop

Here I have a stones texture (800 x 600 pixels) in the Layers Panel which is currently not ready to be used as a tileable texture.


Step2

tileable textures in photoshop

Now, go to Filter > Others > Offset… It will bring up the Offset dialog box. Go ahead and Offset the image horizontally by 400 pixels and vertically by 300 pixels. Please make sure that under Undefined Areas group, Warp around option is selected.

Note: For suitable offset value, check the dimensions of your image and use exactly the half of your image dimensions as Offset value. For example, I am using an image having dimensions 800 x 600 pixels so I used 400 x 300 as my offset value.


Step 3

tileable textures in photoshop

After offsetting your image, you can easily see the two seams visible on our image. Now, select Clone Stamp Tool (S) from toolbar and remove both the seams from your image.


Step 4

tileable textures in photoshop

Now you can use your image as a tileable texture for your games and other projects.

Things to keep in mind while using this technique

  • Keep patience while removing seams from your image, you may find it boring and irritating but it’s a very important part and the final results directly depends on the work you done in this step so take your time and spend good time to get nice results.
  • This technique works best with the images having common elements like grass, sand, concrete and ground textures and we don’t need to be that precise while removing seams. But his technique may not work with some images like the one given below.
    tileable textures in photoshop
    In this Image, removing seams doesn’t help us because our texture has some points that have to be matched correctly, are going too off and making our texture unsuitable for use. I use different methods for these types of textures.

I hope you like this tutorial and let me know if you have any problem regarding this tutorial through your comments and emails. Thanks.