fabric texture

[Typically]

I'm having a problem finding/making a fabric texture. its going to be used for a 2 page spread as a background. i am putting water drops over it and doing the logo as a water drop. i downloaded the alienskin textures demo and it works but not exactly what I'm looking for. i don't have a digital camera that can take a large enough image. if i scan fabric the size of the threads would be to larger i think. the texture has to be sharp and detailed as it will be rather large and a main part of the layout. if anyone has ideas or suggestion that would be great!

[Logo-Mechanix]

This is not my specialty but what if you were to take a picture and create a custom brush in PS?

[Danger_Mouse]

you could scan a small section and tile it, but since you are blowing it up so large you would have to be crafty!

Not having a Digital camera is the killer.

where I work we deal with Fabric as well. We send mockups of our merchandise to clients. We are currently exploring ways to show the textures of different fabrics ON the final product.

One of them is recreating the texture in Illustrator. We are redrawing from a dig. photo an individual weave/hole. Copy step and repeat after that. Play with some transparencies if necessary. We got the same effect.

[TheBluePanda]

http://www.mayang.com/textures/

[Typically]

thanx panda but i found that site and while they do have large textures they aren't large enough.

i think i'm going to try doing it in illustrator. once you trace it in illy do you just tile it or do you do the whole piece? because if i had to do the whole piece it would take way more time than i am willing to spend on it =]

[Danger_Mouse]

can you post what the fabric looks like? Then I could tell you if worth the time.

I would imagine some fabrics would be a beech. I would fill a square of it. Start with one area(thread or pattern) trace it, duplicate it, take those two and duplicate and so on.
Once you fill the square duplicate that sqaure and so on. It only starts out slow. I wouldn't leave out many details, you will get better results.
I say work in squares because then you can easily use the MOVE/COPY dialogue box to reproduce to exact measurements (like a grid).


But it only worked with the types of fabric we have, so thats why I would like to see what your working with.

[Typically]

<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j309/typically/fabricswatch.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting"></a>

it's nothing special just black.

[Danger_Mouse]

hard for me to tell but looks generic is simple. From what I can tell its little black diamonds.
Do a row of diamonds (or whatever shape), copy past the rows. Make a giant color square on layer beneath. Adjust diamonds color to be a darker shade. You made need to adjust tranparency as well, you just have to flatten later. If you do detailed, it will look detailed. Worth a try anyways..

[Typically]

thanks so much i'll post the final product when i finish it up =]

[Danger_Mouse]

cool, looking forward to it

[Alan G]

A neat variation on this theme that I picked up from Terry White's CS podcast: Use Effect>Distort and Transform>Transform. Set up your horizontal or vertical repeat first and set the number of copies and exact step-and-repeat distance. Then do the same thing for the other direction.

The advantage is that if you tweak the module design, you don't have to go through the whole replication process again. Also it's w-a-a-a-y faster than move and copy and your output file is a lot smaller. If you already know your step dimensions, you could do the whole thing in about 10 seconds. (You are limited to 1000 steps this way, so if you need, say, 4000 x 4000 you'd have to make a 4x4 grid with move and copy, then use the above.)

[Danger_Mouse]

Ah yes....I should have thought of that. That would be a more efficient way.:p