By David Gewirtz
Every so often, I want a text to use as a backdrop for some project. Here at ZATZ, I'll often need a background for our cover images on the home pages of the magazines. While you could buy texture CDs from a variety of vendors, sometimes it's fun to create your own out of your own pictures and a few simple filters.
Here's an example. Figure A shows a picture I took of my XBox.
FIGURE A
You're looking at my well-worn XBox. (click for larger image)
Now, the reason I took the picture is simple. The camera was in my hand and I wanted to point it at something. It's not exactly art, but it was on my hard disk when I went looking for textures.
Since I often take pictures at pretty high resolution (and I have a 6 megapixel camera), I often find textures buried in the images I take. For example, if we go to full resolution on the XBox photo, as shown in Figure B, you'll notice some nice black stippling that might make a good texture.
FIGURE B
Here's some good texture material. (click for larger image)
In fact, you can see it better when I copy a rectangle from a clear space, as shown in Figure C.
FIGURE C
A simple rectangular selection gives us a nice texture. (click for larger image)
But there's a lot more you can do with this. Play around with your filters. I found that by using the colored pencil filter, shown in Figure D, I was able to create a very interesting texture.
FIGURE D
Who knew that the colored pencil could create nice textures? (click for larger image)
To be clear, I found this by simply accepting the defaults. The resultant texture is shown in Figure E.
FIGURE E
A unique texture can be derived from your photo collection. (click for larger image)
When you look at this texture, you'd never know it's from a picture of my XBox. It's a great texture, too!