The easiest way to make tileable textures with PhotoShop7 or above

This is a total noob guide in baby steps to making tileable textures in PhotoShop7. Feel free to cut and paste this first image into PhotoShop and try out the tutorial.

Note: version 7 of PhotoShop or above is required.

Here we have a cropped photo of some grass that we are going to make into a tileable texture.

(original Image)

If we tiled it in its present state then it would look like this.

Notice the ugly join seams, but with some help from the amazing healing brush we will make it seamless with just a few brush strokes!
With the original image (which is 128 pixels by 128 pixels) choose Filter > Other > Offset.

Now set it to offset the image by half of its height and width (64 by 64 in this case) with wrap around set.

Now select the Healing brush from the toolbar.

To use this tool you have to first hold the Alt key whist mouse clicking on the source point. With this source point established it will copy it to were you use the brush and adapt it to fit.

Now just brush over the seam lines, changing the source point here and there. It may take a little practice to get it to look right

Now choose Filter > Other > Offset again and offset the image by half of its height and width (64 by 64 in this case) with wrap around set.

It now should offset back to its original state but with the changes made now on the edges.

As you can see you may of made some ugly seam lines whilst removing the other ones. Simply repeat the healing tool process again, but don’t brush close to edges this time, or you will have to offset it again, and repeat the healing process again and again…

This is the finished texture at 100% zoom (the previous ones were shown at 300% zoom or more)

Now when it tiled it is seamless. But do remember when it is viewed in-game it will be a lot bigger, even with the scale set to 1.
If you’re worried about it looking like a repeating pattern try-removing tell tale signs like that little cluster of three purple things with the healing brush.

Conclusion

This technique will only work with irregular patterns like grass, rock faces etc. But once you have mastered this you can experiment with the clone tool and combine the healing brush to easily tile things like brickwork.

DaddyCool