Making Tileable Textures In Photoshop
By Neil Blevins
Created On: Sept 25th 2005
Updated On: Feb 9th 2026
Software: Photoshop

Here's a number of tricks to make tileable textures inside of Photoshop. A tileable texture is any texture that when repeated in the X or Y direction doesn't show a seam.

Preparing The Texture

So lets start with the following photograph that we'd like to make tileable (This is a photo I took at Lake Mead).

Figure 1

The texture is 400 x 400 pixels.

First off, select the entire canvas with Ctrl-A, and hit Image > Crop. Sometimes when dealing with a texture, the actual size of your photograph or paint layer may be larger than the canvas, and this will interfere with making it tileable. Like your texture might be 500x500 pixels, but your canvas is 400x400 pixels, and so parts of your photograph are sitting invisible off the canvas (this is especially true when using the psd format). Cropping lets you get rid of any invisible image off canvas.

Removing Brightness Variation

Next we need to remove large brightness variation. One of the first filter we're going to use is Filter > Other > Offset. Make sure "Wrap Around" is selected, and give it a vertical and horizontal value of half of your image, so in the case of this image, that's 200 and 200 pixels. This will place the seam right in the center.

Figure 2

Notice how obvious the seams are. This is due to large scale brightness variation. In the original image, the lower left corner is far darker than the upper right corner.

So the first thing we need to do is fix these large areas of darkness without getting rid of all the smaller details. Here's 3 different methods for doing this.

High Pass Filter Method

The High Pass filter lets you remove large changes is brightness without removing the small changes in brightness. And that's what we're after here, we want the large changes in brightness to go away (the dark left corner), but we don't want to obliterate the small changes in brightness which are the cracks in the rock.

Start with your original un-offset image, duplicate it as a new layer. Then run the Filter > Other > High Pass on your duplicated layer. Play with the Radius until you've gotten rid of the dark corner, but still have the small rock cracks. For this example, I used a value of 28.0. Smaller values will remove the smaller details, whereas larger values only remove the large brightness changes. Experiment to find the ideal value for your particular image.

Figure 3

This is the result of the filter...

Figure 4

Now take that duplicated layer and set the mode to Luminosity...

Figure 5

The reason to do this is because the high pass filter can change the colors of your image pretty radically. For example, if you look at the image above, running the low pass filter on the background copy layer made the rock much yellower than the original rock. So you want to keep the color of your original image, but use the brightness information of your high pass filtered image, hence you set the layer to luminosity.

Now flatten your image to remove all layers.

Now use your offset filter on the result. The seam is much harder to see.

Figure 6

Gradient Method

Another method to achieve a similar result is the gradient method. This technique gives you more control over the final result, although it's not as automatic as the high pass filter method.

First, start by applying a new Adjustment layer, set to Levels. Brighten the image by some arbitrary amount, don't worry by how much just yet, we'll tweak that later.

Figure 7

Now on the Layer Mask of your Adjustment layer, place a black to white gradient, so that the adjustment layer is only applied to the left side of the image.

Figure 8

Now use the Offset filter to move both the base layer and the adjustment layer half way horizontally. In this case, the image is 400 wide, so move it 200 pixels to the right.

Figure 9

Now adjust the levels amount until the brightness matches pretty close in the middle.

Now do the same thing, except add a new Levels Adjustment layer, and offset the image 200 pixels vertically instead of horizontally. Also, feel free to paint on either of the levels masks to get specific areas brighter or darker. Soon, you'll get a more level result like this...

Figure 10

Thanks to Justin Goode for some useful info with regards to the gradient technique.

Shadow/Highlight Method

You can also try the Shadow/Highlight Adjustment.



Here's the dialog it opens, notice the controls for the dark and bright areas of your image. Playing with them can help give you level the value across your image without losing the small details.



And here's the result on our image after the settings above were applied and after I used the offset filter to see how well it did evening the brightness of the image...



Knowing when to use which of these 3 techniques will take some experience. Personally, I'd start with the High Pass first, if that doesn't give you good results, next try the Shadow/Highlight Adjustment, and if either work well, go for the more manual Gradient Method.

Offset And Clone Brush

So now let's take your image that has had its brightness evened out (This example uses the High Pass Method)...

Offset1

And let's tile it. Looks ok, but you can still see the seams, even if the large brightness differences have been fixed.

Offset2

So to fix this, we start with the 400x400 pixel image, use the Offset filter to push it 200x200 pixels. You get this result.

Offset3

Now use the Clone Brush to clone parts of the rock over top of the seam. You get this result...

Offset4

Now it tiles nicely with no obvious seams...

Offset5

One trick I like to mention is be careful which brush you use to do you cloning. If you use a brush that's too hard or too soft, you'll still have problems at the seams. For example, here's this hard brush...

Brush1

being used to clone this image (the image has been enlarged so we can see the details)...

Brush2

Here's the result, notice how it's slightly better, but you can see the hard edge of the brush...

Brush3

So the answer is usually use a soft edged brush, but that can also cause problems...

Brush4

Brush5

This is far better, but notice the details sort of fade into each other in the seam area. So you get this big blurry mess in the middle. For my work I use a chaotically shaped hard/soft brush, which isn't too hard, isn't too soft, and is oddly shaped so that the eye can't pick up on the brush strokes. Here's the brush I use.

Brush6

Also adjust the brushes parameters with a large "Angle Jitter", that way each brush stroke will have a different pattern (since the brush will be rotated a random value as you clone), and maybe some size jitter (although it's not necessary).

Brush7

This gives far more realistic results when you blend the seam away.

Brush8

Here's the image at regular resolution, no blurry mess, no hard edges...

Brush9

Conclusion

So in short, here's the procedure...
Hope this helps the next time you need to make a tileable texture.

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