WHAT WE’RE CREATING:
THE PATTERN AND TEXTURE MOTHERLOAD
Hello Design Cutters! Today I’m really excited to show you how to create an Autumnal themed wallpaper, using tons of the textures, patterns and backgrounds from our latest deal. To be perfectly honest, there’s so much stuff in there that it was hard to know where to start.
With September 23rd being the September Equinox, it felt appropriate to put together a fall-themed piece. We’ll be leveraging many patterns to give depth to elements. We’ll add textures to that to add an almost tactile feel to the piece. We’ll wrap things up with a few illustrative elements here and there, to tie everything together.
A few technical notes
Just like Jo’s poster tryptich tutorial, we’ll make great use of clipped layers and masks. This will allow us to localize the application of textures and patterns to precisely defined areas. Just as Jo explained, “this means that the layer is only visible/applies to the layer directly below it. You can very quickly do this by holding “Alt” down on your keyboard and clicking between the two layers. Here’s a quick demonstration.”
Also, I’ll be insisting on keeping our workflow as non-destructive as possible. We covered some of these techniques before, but a refresher never hurts. “While it might seem cumbersome at first, such a workflow has many advantages. You could go back to your original piece of content in a heartbeat, by simply turning layers off. You could quickly change the intensity of an effect used during the making of the piece, to make it stronger or more subtle.”
Here are some assets
A fall piece wouldn’t be complete without a few leaves here and there. We found these amazing old leaves and other botanical illustrations that fit perfectly with the spirit of our composition.
Are you ready to go? Let’s jump in!
STEP 1: DOCUMENT SETUP
Most of our work will occur in Photoshop today. Do note that Illustrator would be ideal to manipulate the vector assets above for the later stages of the piece, but you should be able to go without it if you don’t have it.
Start by creating a new document. I’m working with an 24″x18″ canvas @ 300 dpi.
Our composition will be divided in four equal sections, one for each letters of the word “fall.” Since our canvas is 24″ wide, place vertical guides at 6″, 12″, and 18″.
Let’s add some additional vertical guides at 0.5″, 5.5″, 6.5″, 11.5″, 12.5″, 17.5″, 18.5″, and 23.5″. This will help us to create equal-width columns for our letters.
Add some horizontal guides at 0.5″, 9″, and 17.5″.
Finally, this is a good time to save your document. We’ll be using a lot of textures and other elements as smart objects. This will cause our file to be very big, over the 2 Gb limit that the PSD file format can officially handle. Saving your file as a PSB file (Photoshop’s Large Document Format) is mandatory.
Now that this is done, let’s get the real fun started.
STEP 2: THE BACKGROUND STRUCTURE
As I’ve said before, the piece will be divided in four bands of equal width (6″). Each band will have its own hue, patterns, and textures.
Start by making sure that the background layer is unlocked (double click on it if it isn’t). Use your marquee selection tool (M) to create a 6″x18″ selection at the left of your piece.
Fill that selection with #90622a.
Finally, give the layer its own layer group, named after the hexadecimal code for the color. This will allow you to have that code at hand very quickly. Give the layer group a layer mask that reveals only the colored section. This will help with the application of textures and patterns later.
Create a new layer, and fill the next 6″x18″ section with #c57f2b.
Repeat the layer grouping and masking process as well.
Repeat the process for the remaining two sections, filled in #ba5828, and #603c14 respectively.
You can right away group all of these layers in a master Background layer group.
And we have our base for the rest of the piece.
STEP 3: BACKGROUND TEXTURES AND PATTERNS
When browsing the deal’s PDF guide, Rule by Art’s 55 watercolor patterns jumped straight at me. After checking them from closer, my first impression was confirmed: these are awesome. We’ll use these to add a pattern to each of our sections, after texturing them a tad. We’ll be using 2 Lil’ Owls Art Studio textures for that.
Section #90622a
Let’s start with our first section (from the left of the piece to its right). Begin with 2LO – Art Studio 9.jpg.
Place it as a smart object in your document, right above your 90622a layer, and make sure it covers the full height of our section.
Once you’re satisfied with the placement of the texture (slide it right or left to get the desired artifacts within our visible window), sharpen it (Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen).
Next, desaturate the texture. Because its layer is a smart object, you’ll have to use a hue/saturation adjustment layer to do so. You can access these at the bottom of your layer palette.
The settings on the hue/saturation adjustment layer are straight forward. Simply indicate a value of -100 for the saturation.
Next, we’ll use a levels adjustment layer to get the texture’s grain/artifacts to be more visible. Note: usually, this means increasing the contrast to some very dramatic levels.
The 150 value is for the dark pixels that layer is applied to. We’re increasing the number of pixels that are either black or very dark. The 0.75 value is for the mid-tones. We’re also making them darker. The contrast part happens with the 200 value. It’s the one that impacts the light to white pixels. By making it lower, we’re making more pixels brighter. The result is this very strong contrast.
From there, time to clip these adjustment layers to the texture. This ensures that their effects will be applied to the texture layer only, even when we’ll change the texture’s blending mode in a few minutes. In order to clip them to the texture, you can either follow Jo’s tip, or you can select them both at the same time and use the keyboard shortcut ALT/OPTION+CTRL/CMD+G. You can also use this button at the bottom of the adjustment layer’s options.
The result is very visible in the layer palette (before/after).
For each section where we’ll talk about desaturating a texture/pattern, and applying levels to it, this is the process we’ll follow (clipped adjustment layers). We’ll desaturate all of the textures and patterns we’ll be applying, so their own colors won’t affect the color scheme we’ve set for ourselves.
With that in mind, let’s move on.
Proceed to change the texture’s blending mode to Soft light @ 25% opacity.
The next texture is 2LO – Art Studio 3.jpg. It features some nice noisy artifacts, and their position should dictate its placement.
Here are the values I’ve used for the levels, after desaturating the texture.
And here’s what it looks like once the blending mode has been changed to Soft light @ 35% opacity.
Next is our first pattern! Like announced above, we’ll be using Rule by Art’s watercolor patterns. You could either use the source files he’s providing, or the high resolution “Iron” colored version he’s providing (\massive-patterns-bundle-rule-by-art\55_WaterColourPatterns\Chevrons\Large_3000\Iron.jpg.). Just make sure you’re grabbing the high resolution.
I’ll be using \massive-patterns-bundle-rule-by-art\55_WaterColourPatterns\SourceFiles\Chevron.tif.
Start by placing it in your band. In order to give my composition some dynamism, I’ve slightly angled the file (15° counter-clockwise). Don’t be afraid to go big.
After sharpening and desaturating, we’re going apply levels with a slight twist. The row of values below the main row of controls allows us to change how black is the blackest pixel, and how white is the whitest pixel. We’ll use this to our advantage to darken the pattern for a strong effect.
Change the blending mode to Soft light @ 50% opacity.
One down, three to go
The process we’ll follow for the other sections is the same. I have selected two textures and one pattern for each. I’ll spare you the lengthy explanations, and will fly through them quickly.
Section #c57f2b
First texture: 2LO – Art Studio 5.jpg.
Level settings:
Blending mode: Soft light @ 35% opacity.
Second texture: 2LO – Art Studio 4.jpg.
Levels:
Blending mode: Soft light @ 25% opacity.
Pattern: Stripe.tif.
The pattern is rotated by 75° clockwise.
Levels:
Blending mode: Soft light @ 50% opacity.
Section #ba5828
First texture: 2LO – Art Studio 30.jpg.
Level settings:
Blending mode: Soft light @ 50% opacity.
Second texture: 2LO – Art Studio 26.jpg.
Levels:
Blending mode: Soft light @ 25% opacity.
Pattern: X-Out.tif.
The pattern isn’t rotated, but placed quite big in the document (sized at 375%). Don’t forget to sharpen!
Levels:
Blending mode: Soft light @ 50% opacity.
Section #603c14
First texture: 2LO – Art Studio 20.jpg.
Level settings:
Blending mode: Soft light @ 50% opacity.
Second texture: 2LO – Art Studio 21.jpg.
Levels:
Blending mode: Soft light @ 35% opacity.
Pattern: Zig-Zag.tif.
The pattern is rotated 15° counter-clockwise.
Levels:
Blending mode: Soft light @ 35% opacity.
Some minor adjustments
The chevron pattern feels slightly out of place (too strong, and not of comparable scale) at this point.
I’ve tweaked the blending mode to Soft light @ 25% opacity, and scaled it up quite a bit (375%).
Global background texture
We’re now going to add a texture at the top of all of our background layer groups and layers. This will tie things together visually. We’ll leverage Make Media Co‘s awesome watercolor textures for that.
Locate Watercolor1_Version1.jpg, and place it horizontally in your document. It should cover the whole canvas.
Levels:
Blending mode: Soft light @ 50% opacity.
We have our background fully done! Here’s a quick snapshot of our layer palette so far. Bear with me, as it’s very tall.
STEP 4: TYPE STRUCTURE
It’s finally time to move to type! I’m going to use a typeface called Lulo for this piece.
If you don’t own Lulo (which means that you missed out on The Inspirational Creative Font Collection, bummer), you can either grab it from Yellow Design Studio’s Creative Market store, or you could use another typeface altogether.
The League of Moveable Type recently released the beautiful League Spartan Bold, which would work just fine, and is free.
Anyways. Once you’ve selected the sans-serif that floats your boat, it’s time to put it into place. Using the guides that we created all the way at the beginning, place each letters of the word “fall” in their respective containers. I would strongly advise to write each letter separately.
The color I’m using for the type is #ffbf3e. It’s a nice, warm yellow, that fits well with the browns and reds we used in the background, and that’s bright enough to stand out.
For this first pass, I’m using Lulo One Bold, sized at 450 points. The letters are vertically centered on the center of the piece, and horizontally centered more or less within their containers.
While things look good right now, I can spot a few visual tensions, mostly around the A.
The first step towards a solution is to reduce the size of my letters down to 408 points.
After that, it’s a matter of careful nudges, to place each letter in a visually satisfying spot.
Let’s do a bit of layer organization. Just like the background before, we’ll add textures, patterns, and more, so it’ll be primordial to know what is what.
Now, we’re going to add a shading layer to our type. We’ll simply duplicate and nudge the layer copies down and right a few times.
Change the color of the type elements below to #928f3c. It’s a beautiful, rich green.
Once the color is changes, use your arrow keys to nudge the green letters down and right. Tip: use the same number of nudges for down and for right. You can do all letters at once (by selecting their layer group), or individually for a finer control.
And with that, our type structure is complete. Time to texture things a bit!
STEP 5: TYPE TEXTURING AND PATTERN APPLICATIONS
What we’ll do is simple: apply some textures to the green letters, apply some patterns individually to each yellow letters, and apply some texture to the whole lot. Let’s start by the green letters.
#928f3c letter global textures
We”ll leverage 2 textures by Summit Avenue for this part.
First texture: wood-paper-coral.jpg
You’ll find this one in \massive-patterns-bundle-summit-avenue\Modern-Coral-Gray-Digital-Papers\. Place it so it covers the whole block of green letters.
Levels:
Blending mode: Soft light @ 50% opacity.
Second texture: suitcase.jpg
You’ll find this one in \massive-patterns-bundle-summit-avenue\Vintage-Textures-Overlays\.
Levels:
Blending mode: Soft light @ 35% opacity.
Finally, to make sure that these textures have effect only on the green type, a little bit of layer house keeping is necessary. Start by nesting the textures in their own layer group.
Proceed to create a selection from the shape of the letters. You can CTRL/CMD+CLICK them to load them as a selection. Maintain SHIFT pressed at the same time to load multiple layers.
Then, attach a layer mask to the texture layer group. While the selection is active, make sure to highlight the layer group in the layer palette.
Finally, click this button at the bottom of the layer palette. It’ll automatically adopt the active selection as the content it should show, and will hide the rest. Magic!
#ffbf3e letters patterns
Time to add some patterns to the letters. We’ll use the same technique we just applied to the textures for the green letters to apply the patterns to each letter separately (load a selection from the letter object, create a layer mask on the pattern’s layer). I’ll walk you through the first one, and you’ll have to simply reapply the process with the proper assets for the other ones.
Letter F: 7_whitewash.jpg
Find it in \massive-patterns-bundle-summit-avenue\Vintage-Whitewash-Digital-Papers\.
Place it so it covers your whole letter. Don’t be afraid to size it bigger, even if it covers the letter next to it. A bigger pattern scale can be visually interesting.
Create the appropriate layer mask right away. Tip: if you unlock the layer mask and the layer, you can transform them independently of each other.
Here are the levels settings.
Blending mode: Soft light @ 100% opacity.
Letter A: BigGrayDrops_Warm.jpg
Find it in \massive-patterns-bundle-Blixa-6-Studios\24LovelyWatercolorPatternsBundle\GentlerRainPewterBlush\.
Levels settings:
Blending mode: Soft light @ 75% opacity.
First letter L: crochet-flakes-green.jpg
Find it in \massive-patterns-bundle-summit-avenue\Vintage-Holiday-Digital-Papers\.
Levels settings:
Blending mode: Soft light @ 75% opacity.
Second letter L: OffsetTriangles_TomatoPaper.jpg
Find it in \massive-patterns-bundle-Blixa-6-Studios\48MessyOffsetSuperBundle\MessyOffset_AquaTomato\.
Levels settings:
Blending mode: Soft light @ 50% opacity.
You can now group the yellow type elements’ patterns in their own layer group.
Type global textures
Before we apply some type to both the green and yellow type pieces, now would be a good time to decide if you want to further weather the yellow type. Lulo has some grunge artifacts of its own, which are strong enough as they are by default. I won’t push them further.
If you’re using another typeface, I’s suggest to use one of the textures from The Shop’s Subtly worn garage door texture pack. Simply attach a layer mask to the yellow type layer group, and paste this texture in it. Levels tweaks will probably be required.
Now that this is out of the way, let’s return to adding texture elements to both the type groups. The process for this is the same than for adding texture to the green type pieces, except that we’ll create a selection that will include both type groups.
Let’s start with The Shop’s rusted-red-door-texture-pack-sbh-009.jpg (from the rusted red door texture pack).
Place it at the top of your layer stack. It should cover both the green and yellow type elements.
Create a dedicated layer group for it.
Time to tweak the texture. Here are my levels values.
Blending mode: Soft light @ 50% opacity.
The next texture is from The Shop’s WMC Fest texture pack: wmc-fest-2014-texture-pack-sbh-071.jpg.
Levels
Blending mode: Soft light @ 50% opacity.
Time to add the layer mask to the texture layer group. Load a selection (CTRL/CMD+SHIFT+CLICK) with all of the letters, yellow and green.
Click the “Add layer mask” button at the bottom of the layer palette, and magic!
The textures add some subtle highlights to the patterns: mission accomplished.
STEP 6: THE LEAVES FRAME
I talked about them all the way at the beginning: time to use our leaves assets.
I actually created vector versions of these jpg images, in order to make integrating them into our design easier. However, out of respect to the original designers, I didn’t want to link to these vector versions without their full permission. I encourage you to download the original images using the links below, and then integrating these into your designs:
Download image here (The Graphics Fairy)
Download image here (The Graphics Fairy)
Download image here (Old Design Shop)
Download image here (Old Design Shop)
I’d suggest to switch their color to our yellow now (#ffbf3e).
The goal will be to paste the leaves of your choosing, one per one, in order to create a frame around our composition. Let’s start with the top-left corner.
Simply copy the asset from Illustrator, and paste it as a smart object in your Photoshop document.
Keep all the assets grouped together.
Choose the assets at your discretion. The goal is to have the result be visually consistent (line weight, sizes, etc.). Giving an angle to the leaves can help to make the piece as a whole more dynamic.
Flipping the resources horizontally or vertically (so the leaves don’t all the same direction) is also a solid way to add visual variety to the exercise.
STEP 7: GLOBAL TEXTURES
With the frame completed, we just need to add a few last textures to tie everything together. They will get their own layer group, at the top of the layer stack.
Let’s start by adding two textures that will help us to add a bit of noise/dust speckles to our piece. First is subtle-texture-03.png from Artifical’s Subtle grit pack 01.
Place and size it as big as your canvas.
The next step is to give it a pure white color overlay. Double click on the layer in the layer palette to bring up the layer style dialog box.
The result is these very subtle dust speckles.
Next up is Vector Grit Textures Pack 2-10.png, from Artificial’s Vector grit pack 02.
Place it in the canvas, and give it a color overlay as well, but with our yellow this time (#ffbf3e).
Next in the series, we have The Shop’s asphalt-markings-volume-02-texture-pack-sbh-038.jpg from the Asphalt markings textures volume 02.
Levels
Blending mode: Soft light @ 15% opacity.
The next one is weathered-wood-textures-volume-01-sbh-033.jpg, from The Shop’s Weathered wood textures volume 01.
I placed this one so most of the scratches are at the top left corner.
Levels
Blending mode: Subtract @ 25% opacity
Last but not least, we’ll use one of Rob Brink’s halftone textures to add an old print effect to our composition. Find it in \massive-patterns-bundle-Rob-Brink\Halftone_Texture_Pack\Halftone_Texture_Pack_Vector.ai. The one we’re interested in is number 7.
Simply place it in your composition as a smart object, and cover the whole canvas.
Blending mode: Soft light @ 75% opacity.
And here’s our layer stack
And we’re done!
WRAPPING THINGS UP
Phew, that was a long one. I hope you had as much fun following along than I had writing the tutorial. I hope I managed to share the diversity of the resources included in the bundle. We’ve only scratched the surface here. If you’ve grabbed it, I hope you enjoy your new resources! Remember, you can only grab all of these best-selling resources for the next few days, for 95% off the regular price.
I’d love to see your tutorial outcomes! Please share them on the Design Cuts Facebook page!
Finally, a little bonus for the road. If you follow this link, you’ll get access to a wallpaper version of the piece, that you could use to beautify your monitor.
Remember, this week’s Massive Artistic Patterns, Textures and Backgrounds Bundle is only available for the next few days. Grab it for 95% off, while you still can.
That’s it for today. Until next time, cheers!
It’s a great tutorial! Thanks a lot
Oh we’re so happy that you think so Rachel!