Creating a Realistic Wood Texture in Photoshop

In this tutorial I will be showing you how to create a realistic wood texture in Photoshop.

Open up Photoshop and create a new document (Ctrl + N) and set the size to 500x500, or larger if you want to.

Make sure your colors are reset by pressing D, and then set your foreground and background colors to two different shades of brown. I used #936b00 for the foreground, and #5f4500 for the background.

Now go to filter > render > clouds, and the clouds should render out in your two colors you selected. Then go to filter > distort > polar coordinates, set the options to polar to rectangular and click OK.

Now we will go to filter > noise > add noise, and set the amount to 7% and check the box next to monochromatic. Then go to filter > blur > motion blur, set the angle to 90 degrees and the distance to 30 pixels.

Create a new layer either by going to layer > new > layer, or using the shortcut (Shift + Ctrl + N).

Now we are going to create the appearance of grain on the wood, this might seem a bit tricky so I'll try to explain as best I can.

Set your foreground color to a shade that is darker than your background, I used #34290b. Then select your rectangular marquee tool and make a thin horizontal selection across the image. Right click on the selection and select fill from the menu, when prompted make sure your foreground color is selected and click OK to fill. Then repeat the selection many times up and down the image and use varying thicknesses. For a time saver, you can hold shift down to make multiple selections so you only have to do the fill option once.

Now go to filter > distort > wave, and play around with the settings until you get a realistic wood grain effect. The settings I used are, number of generators 2, wavelength minimum 197 and maximum 495. Amplitude minimum 257 and maximum 369, scale 100% for both options and select wrap around under undefined areas.

Right click on your layer with the lines in the layer window and select merge down. Now we're going to add noise and blur to it again. So go to filter > noise > add noise and put 3% as the amount and click OK. Then go to filter > blur > motion blur, and use 90 degrees and 10 pixels for the options.

Press ctrl + m to bring up the curves dialog, click on the line which will add a new point and set it to input: 215 and output: 243, then if you want you add add more points and play with the settings to create various different types of wood finishes.

Then finally, right click on your layer in the layers window and duplicate it. Then set your new layers blending option to overlay. You can use other ones too such as multiply, color burn, hard light, vivid light and so on, it all depends on your personal preference.