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Tutorial: Realistic Jeans Texture in Photoshop

• by Andy Gongea
• May 11, 2009
• 9 Comments »

I know that these days you can find many tutorials on the web on how to make jeans texture. Some of the tutorials have great results like the one from 9tutorials.com. But I wanted something different and I started to think of a way to create jeans texture. I will show the steps in this tutorial. I hope you will like it.

Overview
We will first make a pattern that will draw diagonal lines. After that we will apply a couple of filters and apply the pattern for 2 layers and that’s it.

Step 1 – Create a pattern that will draw diagonal lines

The first step is to create the pattern. We will do that by creating a new 5×5 pixels document with transparent background.
After creating the document, we will select the diagonal pixels and color them in a solid color.

After the diagonal was created and filled, go to the Edit Menu and select Define Pattern

Step 2 – Create the blue noisy texture

Now we will create a new document of 620x240px. I picked this size because of the width of the blog post. You can choose your own size. Then, pick a color and fill the document with that color. In our case it should be a blue color that is common to jeans.

After the color is applied, we have to add some noise to the image to simulate the jeans texture.
For this we will go to Filters » Noise » Add Noise and choose the following settings: Amount-6%, Distribution-uniform and monochromatic.

Step 3 – Add diagonal lines

Now that the texture is set, let’s add the characteristic of the jeans texture – diagonal lines.
Remember that we already have a pattern that creates oblique lines. Let’s apply it and color the lines in white. First create a new layer to apply the pattern, then – press Shift+F5 and a new window will appear.
Choose Pattern from the Fill Window, choose our pattern, press OK and we have a new layer with diagonal lines.

Now we will have to color the lines in white. You can do that in several ways:

Ctrl+Click – on the layer with oblique lines
Shift+F5 and select to fill with White color.

or

Click on the layer and select Lock Transparent Pixel from the Layers Window
Choose the white color as the foreground color
Alt+Backspace

After this task is done, reduce the opacity of the lines to 20%

It looks quite OK, but we still have to add a little detail for a realistic texture.
Since we have the white lines, now all we need are black lines. We will use them to create a 3d effect for the texture. So, the next step is to duplicate the lines layer (Ctrl+J when the lines layer is selected) and press Ctrl+I in order to invert the white color to black. Now we have to raise the opacity back to 100% and move the layer 1 pixel to the right.

The Result

Of course you can add additional levels of details, like more noise, some luminosity. This is just the base for a denim texture. The rest is up to you. I hope you like the technique and good luck on your designs.
Cheers!