The Double-Do-It and Crop-it Approach
How to keep a seamless texture seamless when using Photoshop filters.
By Ryan Foss
The basic premise to the Double-Do-It and Crop-It approach is just
that, you take the image canvas and double it. Then Duplicate the
image so that its a 2x2 grid tile. Then you do what you want to
do, then crop the canvas back to the original dimensions, thus keeping
the seamlessness This is how it goes.
Take
an image that you know is seamless, like this sample metal grating.
In this case, the image is 200 x 160 pixels. |
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However, if you want to get "artsy" with this image,
but maintain the seamlessness, you may have difficulties. For instance,
let's try applying a Motion Blur.
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Unfortunately, the
image border breaks the seamlessness as can be seen when the
image is tiled. |
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Well, lets fix it already!
So, knowing that we want to apply a filter that breaks a seamless image
at the borders, lets Double It up. Take the original image, then double
the canvas size (%200) with the anchor in the top left corner.
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Now duplicate
the original layer three times and position them so that you've got the
image tiled in a 2 x 2 grid. Merge down or flatten image.
Now apply the
filter.
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Adjust the canvas size back to norma by halving it
(%50) with the anchor in the center. Get where we're going here?
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This image is seamless. Its a few extra steps to keep it
that way, but at least its possible. Here is a comparison.
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Original
image with filter applied results is visible seam when tiled. |
By
Double-Do-It and Crop-It, we can maintain the seamless nature of
the image. |
In summary, though this is purely an example, you may come
across situations where filters create unwanted seams. This is a
simple and easy method to keep the seamless appearance.
Don't forget to checkout our entire Tutorials
section.
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