Ever wondered how to create your own seamless texture out of an image? If so, grab your source image and follow this quick and easy tutorial.

First of all, you need to choose a suitable image to start with. I’ll use this one:

You can download it from here or use your own.

Keep in mind that the image of texture you choose to work with should be with either plain, easy to blend pattern, or with complex pattern which will make the imperfections less noticeable.

When you choose the right one, open it up in Photoshop.

In my image, there’s a big, red blotches that make it hard to achieve that seamless look, so I’ll crop just a portion of the image. Select the Crop tool (C) and create a square selection (hold down Shift key while dragging).

As you can see, I’ve selected an area of an image that has a lot of fibers and spots. I’ve done this because if the texture has only one or two spots in the middle of it, it will look terribly bad. You will be able to see these spots repeated throughout and I’m pretty sure that’s not what you want.

We’ve done with this part, so it’s time to move to the next step. Go to Image>Image Size and change the pixel dimensions to something easy to remember. In my case 500px by 500px

Now go to the top menu and choose Filter>Other>Offset. Inside the dialog box set both horizontal and vertical dimensions to 50% of the original image size (250 x 250, in my case). Make sure you check wrap around and hit OK.

You should have something like this:

See all those seams? We have to clean them up somehow. Fortunately, Photoshop offers a variety of ways to get rid of those ugly lines. I think there’s no right or wrong method as long as you get the desired effect. However, my two favorites are the Clone Stamp Tool and the Healing Brush Tool. I choose which one to use depending on the image but most of the time the Clone Stamp Tool works best.

Select it from the toolbar (or hit S on your keyboard). If you’re not familiar with Clone Stamp Tool here is a quick explanation. Basically, it replicates pixels from one part of your image into another part of the same image. It can be a bit tricky at first but once you get used to it you’ll see that it’s pretty easy. To select source from your image move the mouse to the area you want to copy from and hold down Option/Alt key. The cursor will change to a little target. Now, while still holding down the Option/Alt key, just click anywhere on the image to set your clone source. Then release the Option/Alt key and start painting over the part of the image you want to replace.

There’s just one last thing you should keep in mind. The Brush. When working on textures do not use some basic brush, but give a try to any of the “Natural Brushes” or “Natural Brushes 2” instead.

With this particular texture I found out that “Charcoal” from “Natural Brushes” suits my needs best. Play around with size and opacity until you get everything smoothly blended. After a few minutes of painting I end up with this:

Now lets check if our texture is ready for tilling. Go to Filter>Other>Offset and run the offset filter again. You should see no lines at all. If you do, grab the Clone Stamp Tool again and paint until you’re satisfied with the result.

Here comes the last step. You can save the texture as JPG (keeping the file size as low as possible) and use it as a background of your webpage. If you want to use the texture in your Photoshop projects then go to Edit>Define Pattern, give it a name and start using it.

Here is my result. I think it looks quite good for only a few minutes of work.

And that’s it! Now you know how to create your very own seamless texture.