Textures…Stone/Brickwork

Thank you very much for the tut Bazza.. the final image looks brilliant.. great stuff!

Some ideas for stone/brick work, again using Paint Shop Pro…If your using V10 try using the High Pass Sharpen in the latter stages…I haven’t used it here but it does help to give you some nice sharpened highlights.

The idea is to first create a base Stone/Brick texture that tiles and can be used over and over with different filters applied. To keep the image sizes down I’ve created this one at 256×256 but you can do a much better job if you increase the texture size to 512×512.
If you do this, and follow this through remember the brush sizes I give here are for a 256×256 texture so would need to be doubled in most cases .Also the grid size would need to be 128, not 64

If you want to follow this through you need the Lands.bmp file ( if you don’t already have it)…this is one of the texture filters from an earlier version of PSP….V7 I think…..I’ve attached it to this post…it needs to go into the Textures folder of PSP….find the folder that has the Concrete and Ashpalt textures and drop it in there.

You could create your own if you wish…It’s quite easy to do…this filter is only 128×128, so if you are creating a texture at 512×512 it may be worth creating a filter this size as well to stop to much repetition.

See the attached Stone1.jpg image…..

Top left….
1) Create a new file…256×256….fill it with Red=110, Green=80, Blue=46
2) In the Effects Menu Choose andgt;andgt;andgt;andgt;Texture Effects andgt;andgt;andgt;Texture and select the Lands filter
Set the size to 200%….Depth=1….Smoothness, Ambience, Shininess all = 0….click OK
3) In the Image menu Rotate the image 90 degrees clockwise and run the Lands filter again with the same settings.

Top Right….
1) In the Adjust menu run the Smart Photo Fix
2) Click the Reset to default arrow at the top of the window
3) Move the Highlight slider to 42 and the Sharper slider to 82….Click OK

Bottom Left….
1) In the Adjust Menu, choose Add/Remove Noise
2) Choose Gaussian and Monochrome…set the % to 7…Click OK

Bottom Right…(adding the mortar lines)
1) Right click on the image window bar and click Grid
2) Right Click again and choose Change Grid
4) Change the current image settings to..Horizontal=64, Vertical=64, Units=Pixels….Click OK
5) Select the Lighten/Darken tool….Size=3, Hardness=100%, Opacity=60%…Shape= Square, Mode=Lightness
6) Hold down the right Mouse button and draw in the mortar lines using the grid as a guide.
7) Run the lands filter again…depth=2….size=90%
Turn the grid off…save the file

See the attached Stone2.jpg image…..

Top Left…..
1) Make sure the foreground colour is still the same as you started with R=110, G=80, B=46
2) Choose the Brush tool….Size=45, Hardness=0, Density=13. Opacity=10…Blend Mode=Burn
3) Hold down the Left Mouse Button and make a horizontal pass along the center pf each course of stones.
Try to do this with just one movement…don’t let the brush pause anywhere.

Top Right…..
With an imaginary light scorce shining from the top left corner of the texture to bottom right corner…each block would have a highlight along it’s top and left hand edge….also a shadow along it’s bottom and right hand edge.
Assuming of course, that the stone blocks are not completly flat…..so…..

1) Choose the Lighten/Darken Tool…Size=3, Hardness=23, Opacity=37, Shape=Round, Mode=Lightness
2) Hold down the left mouse button and put in the highlights along the top and left hand edges of each block.
3) Hold down the right mouse button…do the same along the bottom and right hand edges for the shadow.
4) Now is a good time to check that the texture will tile ok…Choose Effects andgt;andgt;andgt;Image Effectsandgt;andgt;andgt;Offset
Horitontal=128, Vertical=0, Edge Mode=Wrap…Click Ok
5) The edge of the image have now been moved to the center…if any joint lines are present use the clone tool to remove these…when your happy run the Offset again…same settings…the image is back to normal.

Bottom Left….
1) Run the Smart Photo Fix again…click the Reset to Default arrow
2) Set the Sharper slider to 75….click Ok

Bottom Right….
What we are aiming for at the moment is a base image we can work with to create different styles of stone/brickwork…the bottom left image doesn’t look to bad, but for a base image there is far to much noise.
There are loads of different ways to remove this…..
for now just choose Adjust andgt;andgt;andgt; One Step Noise Removal.
This is now the base image…save the file…whenever you need some stonework you load this image into PSP.
Copy it…Paste it as a new image and close the original.

Next the intersting stuff…

See the attached Stone3.jpg image…..

So with a copy of the base image in PSP…..

Top left…
Only a slight change here…I added 5% of Gaussian Monochrome noise and used a small ( size 4 ) soften brush along the edges of each block.

Top Right….
The base image with the Carpet texture filter…Size 70%…Depth 3

Bottom Left…
The base image with the Concrete texture filter….Size 90%….Depth 2

Bottom Right…
The base image with the Asphalt texture filter….Size 90%….Depth 2

That’s about it really, the combinations are endless…the trick is to take your time and get the base texture right.

Things to try….

1) Use the Hue/Saturation/Lightness in the Adjust menu…take the Stauration slider down to remove most of the colour. You may need to re-adjust the contrast/sharpness after doing this…Use the Smart Photo Fix for this.

2) Again in the adjust menu change the colour balance for different colored brickwork

3) Use combinations of 1 and 2 to get different effects

4) If you create two textures with different filters applied like the bottom left and bottom right images, you can blend these together….Make a copy of the first image and Paste it back to the second image as a New Layer.
Select the new layer and take the Opacity slider down till you get the degree of blend you want.

Hope someone finds all this usefull….

Bazza