One of the biggest trends in web and graphic design in the past couple of years has been the use of textures in websites, print design, and everything in between. Textures help give designs a more “real world” feeling by incorporating surfaces that we are all familiar with.
The premise of a texture is pretty basic: it’s simply a photograph of one specific surface, whether it be wood, fabric, paper, or one of the millions of other textures out there.
At first glance it seems like textures would be pretty easy to create, just point your camera at a surface and snap away. That being said, there is a difference between a good texture and a bad texture and in this tutorial I’ll walk you through the steps of creating amazing textures. Here’s a quick rundown of what we will be covering:
- Equip Yourself for Texture Creation
- cameras
- other hardware
- software
- The Keys to Good Texture Photography
- sharpness
- exposure
- lighting
- further reading
- Polishing Up the Textures through Editing
- contrast
- sharpening
- saturation
- further reading
- Ideas and Inspiration
Equip Yourself for Texture Creation
I’m a big fan of minimalism, so the less equipment I can carry around with me, the better. Here’s a quick rundown of the necessities:
