I was playing with the clouds filter the other day and discovered some interesting (to me) textures.

I started simply by making an 8x10 300ppi image and running the clouds filter with foreground and background set to default b/w, then I:

Used Find Edges and applied Emboss and added a Hue/Sat adjustment layer
Started over and used Find Edges and applied Bas Relief
Started over and applied Craquelure stacked with Chrome in the Filter Gallery

(I had to really crunch down the image to upload here, obviously they looked much better at full rez)

I also got interesting results with Highpass and a few others. So what can you do with the same starting clouds image and just some filters?

It would be really interesting to have a thread with a nice collection of textures, just like these ones.

The second one impresses me the most, i has the same consistancy of fibre glass, i'm sure i could find a use for it.

Would love to see what other people can produce.

Thanks Doug !

Duplicate clouds layer. Posterize bg layer to 12 levels. Set duplicate layer blend mode to exclusion. Flatten and emboss.

These are great textures Doug. Do you mind if I use them?

Stacked the notepaper and chrome filters, then color adjusted with levels on individual channels.

Please stop me.

I don't care if anyone uses any of these, but the point (and the whole point of this Scratch Pad subforum) is for you to try the technique yourself and expand on it, then post any interesting results that you've gotten.

Doug, it seems you have found your own personal version of the addictive kaleidoscope.

kiska

Kiska, you seem to be right. Join in! :)

Solarize, then Plastic Wrap filter.

I think it is important at this stage to point out that when you create a texture that is to be used in the 'Tiling Process' then you will benefit by using the following method to make your texture seamless.

Creating your texture with the following dimensions help this.

128x128 / 256x256 / 512x512 / 1024x1024 / etc, etc...

This work particulatly well with the ' Clouds Filter' but also applied to other built in Photoshop filters ( experiment ).

For instance:

- Create a new document with the dimensions 128x128
- Then apply the clouds filter ( Filter / Render / Clouds )
- Select all ( CTRL+A ) or ( Command+A on the MAC i believe ) and define it as a pattern ( EDIT / DEFINE PATTERN / name as CLOUDS ) press OK
- Now create a NEW documnet with the dimensions 1024x1024
- Fill with your new *Clouds* pattern ( EDIT / FILL / select PATTERN from the USE: dropdown box then from the CUSTOM PATTERN )

As you can see, you now have a CLOUDS texture that fills a 1024x1024 image that is perfectly seamless.

This principle is not only limited to the clouds filter, it can also be applied to other filters within Photoshop ( not all ), so as you can see, with a little thought before hand, you can create stunning ' SEAMLESS' textures with little effort.

I've forgotten all the steps I used here. I know it involved putting another layer over the clouds layer, using a spectrum gradient, applying difference clouds, switching blend mode to lighten, flatten, then stacking plastic wrap and sumi-e filters. I think. I've probably forgotten something or included something I didn't actually do. Try it yourself.

Axleuk:

Unfortunately, many of the filters apply directional lighting of some sort, making tiles problematic (but not impossible, I'm open to suggestions). But these effects are resolution independent, so you could make one so big tiling was unnecessary.

Doug, that last texture looks to me like Skittle that have be thrown on the floor and got caught in the rain.... I love it !!

I have even less of an idea on this one, but it started with the same clouds. I remember there was a stained glass filter in there somewhere, and difference clouds, and it ended with plastic wrap, but I think there were 3 or 4 more other steps that I've forgotten.

Doug, dammit, GO AWAY!

Very cool. And I'm glad to hear I'm not suffering alone :)

Doug, it seems you have found your own personal version of the addictive kaleidoscope.

kiska


LOL, I agree! Love all the results, especially the vibrant stain glass one by Doug, and the brightly colored one by kiska.

Accented edges, highpass sharpen, then I made it a seamless tile (just for fun).

Clouds/Difference Clouds is basic mid-point displacement and is fractal. Although, I'm not sure how the interations are handled. Clouds/Difference Clouds will tile for powers of 2 because of the nature of the algorithm. X and Y are independant, so 128x256 will also tile. I saw the proof for this once when I was doing research into Perlin, Veronelli, and Worley. It's a calculus thing.

Even though it is already fractal, you can add 'more fractalness' to Clouds.

New layer and Clouds/Difference Clouds to taste.
Another layer and Clouds/Difference Clouds to taste.
Set the second layer to Linear Light and set Opacity to 50%.
Another layer and Clouds/Difference Clouds to taste.
Set this layer to Linear Light and set Opacity to 25%.

You should end up with something like Clouds, but a little bit different.

Of course, you don't have to use Linear Light. Try other blending modes.

Also, you can also toss in other filters in the same manner.
For example, High Pass at 8 on the bottom layer, then High Pass at 4 on the next layer, and so on.
Or Gaussain Blur in the same manner.

Might be a good idea to Auto Level after various things to help keep the highs high and the lows low. Or fade Auto Levels. Or no Auto Levels at all.

I've used the High Pass variation for some veined marble type stuff. Small veins and bigger veins. Very cool.

With the Gauss variation and some masking action, you can get some good looking clouds. Like, clouds in the sky.

Clouds/Difference Clouds is also a good start for Perlin Noise.
Do a layer with Clouds/Difference Clouds to taste.
Make sure interpolation is set to some flavor of bi-cubic.
Free Transform the Clouds down to 10% or so.
Free Transfrom it back up to original size.

Chrome stacked with Accented Edges, color balance, sharpen, seamless.

Am I the only one that finds this interesting to do?

Stroker, good info, thanks.

NP, Doug. Was playing with this around 2 months ago. Unfortunately, only kept a few examples. Really sucks because I had some good looking fire and other things.

Attached is a variation using Clouds and High Pass.
Can't remember all the tricks I used for this one, though.

Uh-oh. Lights are flickering due to winter weather.
Gotta go and batten down the hatches.

I have no freaking idea what all I did for this one. But I do know it started with USM set to a very high setting. Gave an interesting granular look. Then I think I used emboss and some other stuff (but no artistic filters). Seamless.

Stroker: a good green marble was one of the things I was looking for when I first started this.

Dust and Scratches, posterize, emboss (not seamless, I'm getting tired)

This time I ran clouds on the individual channels, then put the whole thing through the watercolor filter. unseamly

Twirl, twirl, twirl, dupe layer, set dupe blend mode to luminosity, emboss on dupe, flatten, flip horizontal, twirl, twirl, twirl

Halftone, deleted red and green channels, cropped in on just a few dots, accented edges stacked twice, spectrum gradient on color blend layer

Here's a change of pace for ya.

Clouds + Offset + Polar Coords

For DEMONIC DOUG!

Ooo! I like! How'd you do it?

Oh, Doug, I'm not sure. I did one layer of clouds, one of diff. clouds. Then fibers, copied, transformed 90°, glowing edges or find edges>overlay, anisotropic. That's all I remember and I'm not sure that's the order.
Good luck!
kiska

Oh,oh! I just remembered. I used this pattern before fibers, I think. The pattern is what I transformed sideways.

I might have stumbled onto something semi-useful. Make 3 color fill adjustment layers. On the second and third layers' mask run the clouds filter. Doubleclick on each of the 3 in turn and adjust colors to taste. Viola, instant cliche studio backdrop!

Wind (stagger), accented edges, invert, rotate

Ooo, I like the wind one!

The Wind one is good for making Displacement maps.
Like for a 3d topology type thing.

For Doug's given example:
Flip > Vertical
Save as a PSD for use as a D-Map with Displace
New Document with what you want to use for a 'surface'.
Use Transform > Distort or Perspective to make it 'lean back'.
Filter > Distort > Displace using Horizontal 0 and Vertical 25 or so.
And Stretch to Fit.
Try different positive values for Vertical.

That's the gyst of it. The refined version would need some Levels/Curves and some masking action. Alas, I don't write Displace tutorials anymore.

Extrude, mirrored half

Well I discovered this thread this morning. I guess there are several of us that do this rather than other things. What I have found interesting with clouds is to run the wave filter after the cloud rendering. That has several settings so you can adjust the direction, frequency and amplitude of the fiber you are creating.

In this example I just did clouds on the default settings and then the wave filter. The possibilities are endless but its a great way to waste time and thats what this little excursion to clouds has done for me.

Of course I'm retired so I do have time to do these sort of things. Hey have a good day and get back to work

1.) New File; default colors
2.) Render Clouds + hold down opt/alt key
3.) Difference Clouds
4.) Brightness +75 Contrast +44
5.) Hue/Sat Colorize 325H;24S;1L

There are some clouds in this somewhere but I think they got lost under everthing else.

I found this odd though.
I made a square selection, then modified it with 'Border'.
Great - but I wanted a double border. Things went funny from then on. I applied the border several more times.


Why does it not just give more borders???

Hard to imagine how simple this really is, but it is!

Step 1: Open New doc-
Step 2: Set your default colors to black and white or hit D on your keyboard.
Step 3: Filters- Render- Clouds
Step 4: Filters-Render- Difference Clouds Do this about 5-10 times or until you get an interesting pattern...
Step 5: Filters-Distort-Polar Coordinates-Polar to Rectangle
Step 6: Image-Rotate Canvas-Flip Canvas Vertical
Now lets add some color!
Step 7: Add a Solid Color layer of Orange- change the mode to Color Burn
Step 8: Make another Solid Color Layer of Red- Change mode to Screen Change the Opacity to 10%

And Viola! A Fiery Background! Enjoy!

Amber

Not sure what you could do with this, but here is another one for the clouds filter.

Step 1: Open new Doc
Step 2: Set your paint colors to the default black and white (Hit D)
Step 3: Filters-Render-Clouds
Step 4: Filters-Render-Difference Clouds
Step 5: Filters-Stylize-Emboss Set Angle to 135, the height to 3, and the amount to 300.

Add some color by using Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation, don't forget to put a check in the colorize box!

Well there you go- even more simple than the fiery background!

Have fun!

Amber

Cool fire, and that looks like the chiseled stone I see on some government building foundations.

After I posted my faux curtains thread in this subforum I discovered clouds work well for it, as well. But I thought it was a bit redundant, and I seem to be the only one interested in curtains :)

.....Unfortunately, many of the filters apply directional lighting of some sort, making tiles problematic.Seems that you've been using Lighting Effects - Omni, just switch to Directional and the tiles come out fine.

Like this one:
1)
Clouds in individual channels;
Pixelate>Facet;
Filter>Other>Custom (Emboss);
Render>Lighting - Directional.

What am I doing here - I should be discussing the intricacies of the FFT. Well this is a lot more fun!

2) Applied original coloured clouds as a 100% displacement map.

Rô

I liked Amber's :wavey: rocks so much, I decided to nudge it a little further. (Fun - more difference clouds = more ridges ;) )
After doing the rock, put in another layer with new rock-coloured clouds, set blending to Color, opacity ~10%;
Then another layer using White / Full Red clouds, set blending to Saturation, opacity ~20%.

Rô

I love the colored effects.

The one filter I like except for its lighting is plastic wrap. It gives an excellent wet look, but it has a hotspot in the center that would be rather obvious if tiled.

Oh, dear.. another one.

Coloured-relief map of Renderland.

Duplicate, apply HSB -> RBG filter on the clouds (Red channel only), posterize, blend as color and tweak.

Rô

Ok, a weird one, with a weird attachment (a tiny, tiny, animated GIF).

I used Byro's clouds on different channels, then added a Hue/Sat layer and simply moved the Hue slider. Even at screen rez this made for a 1mb animation, so I postage-stamped it, but it's not about the animation, it's about the cool effect. No idea of what use this could be, but it's fun on a screensaver level.

nice thread

Hi all, just stumbled accross this site the other day, as i was doing a bit of research into image retouching. Nice to find a good forum like this.

Anyway when i saw the clouds>solarize>plastic wrap texture i instantly saw magma / lava and wanted to add some colour to it and this is what i came up with.

basically as you can see in my layers set up i just made the background a bright red, had the original still in black and white but changed the layer mode to linear. duplicated this layer, hue/saturation>colorise to a bright yellow, change mode to linear dodge, duplicate layer and change to overlay and this was the result.

Very cool or should I say hot! ;)

It reminds me of burnt cheese, like when you are toasting a grilled cheese sandwich.

The nice thing about this challenge is there there is nowhere to go wrong.. Just try some stuff and see what ya get. I thought the texture I got here was really something.

Rendered clouds
Distort - ripple
Plastic wrap
Angled stroke

then I messed around in the channel mixer until I got a color I liked.

Looks like rotary sanded brass :thumbsup:

A lot of interesting ideas here.
I took the piece I had posted in the Scanner Art thread, added clouds and craquelure over it and played with blending modes.

I made an action for the smoke thread (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/photo-retouching/17141-photoshop-smoke-effect.html) and had the idea to run it on clouds.

Tip: I cheated and held Alt while running Render Clouds, it creates a much more dramatic version.

I do this now to relax, like some people play minesweeper :)

This actually wouldn't work at the higher rez specified in the first post.

Clouds
Water Color
Duplicate layer
Find Edges on duplicate
Set duplicate to Multiply
Add Hue/Sat layer to colorize

you folks would love filter forge. i do this stuff all day in FF. the 'components' are plug n play... plug your perlin noise into noise distortion then run it through a refraction component, etc, etc, etc. great fun. and you can get quite elaborate.

one of the great things about what you all are doing is what i call 'textures as art'. normally, i used to think of textures as background or fill or overlays to something else. but, in fact, textures all by themselves can be art. and, i think this is what is so appealing about all this.

i dont want to get too far away from doug's original theme here of what you can do with clouds and photoshop, but i'm going to post a 'filter' example i did in filter forge here of 'texture as art'. this was made entirely with filter forge using the same sorts of components as you have and use in photoshop and similar programs.

the various parts of this are all fairly common filters/components. the waterfall is perlin noise, stretched. the water is the same but rotated and color added. the background is worley noise with color added from a 5 color gradient. and the beach is perlin noise scaled down to speck size and colored.

one isnt likely to do too many portraits this way, but for landscapes, this can be quite useful and fun :)

Clouds
Difference Clouds while holding Alt key X 24-36 times (I lost track, I just kept hitting ctrl-F until I liked what I saw)
Duped layer and applied Emboss
Blended using Pin Light
Made tileable using Offset and Patch tool

A shame to resize it for posting, it was beautiful to zoom in on the wispy midtones

Started with clouds
Ran Difference Clouds about 50-60 times, zoomed in very tight and browsing around using the hand tool to find an interesting section. If I didn't find an interesting section I ran DC again.
Copied interesting new section to new document
Resampled back to 8"x10", 300ppi
Used freeware Mehdi Kaleidoscope filter (http://www.mehdiplugins.com/english/kaleidoscope.htm)
Used Find Edges, adjusted with levels
Duped layer, ran Emboss
Added very slight bit of Gaussian Blur
Used levels to adjust
Applied Exclusion blend mode
Flattened
Drew in Radial Gradient, difference mode, from center to edge

It's much more interesting at 300ppi and full size, you can zoom in on each little "tube". In fact, I named it "A Series of Tubes"

wow maybe i missed it, but no ones brought up lightning?
create a duo tone gradient the diagonol one, the more contrast the better, not TOO much though.
then create clouds, use levels to find a strong white line in the center, invert the image and screen blend it to whatever its going on.

Here's how to break a drought in 10 minutes using clouds, often used in this country.
Unfortunately you may find it only works to this recipe using CS2 or later.
Ok, make a new document - 500 x 500 pixels
press D
create a new layer
Apply -- filter >render >clouds
filter >blur >Gaussian blur set 6
filter >blur >motion blur. angle 90 distance 80
image >image size. set width = 300 pixel. (untick constrain proportions)
filter >artistic >plastic wrap. Hi light strength =15, detail =10, smoothness =10
filter >sketch >chrome. detail =0, smoothness =8
edit >fade chrome. opacity =100%. mode =hard light
image >image size >height =800 pixels. leave constrained proportions unchecked
edit >transform >warp. Now move anchors to resemble running water
Add a gradient colour and a tap, then go fill the swimming pool for the kids.

Render clouds.
Gaussian blur (somewhere around 100, more or less)
Find edges
Auto levels (adjust left slider to right for darker)

Works with images too. Some neat effects with blend modes over original.

:wavey:

Way cool Blacknight. Welcome back.

Janet