This is a photoshop plug-in for generating interesting textures. The textures are generated by computing '1/f noise' . It does a reasonable job of simulating natural textures with a similar frequency distribution. These include clouds, dirty floors, marble, granite, wood, etc. It's also useful for generating unusual synthetic textures. An advantage of this technique is that the texture can be computed arbitrarily large without repeating.
INSTALLATION
Put the file 'Synthetic Texture' in the plug-ins folder for Adobe Photoshop. Quit photoshop and restart it if it was already running. 'Synthetic Texture' is accessed in the 'Other' sub-menu under 'Filters'.
OPERATION
There are two controls and two check boxes that control the program's operation.
X PERIOD, Y PERIOD
This is the distance in pixels for the period of the lowest frequency component, a different value can be used in X and Y. This value is the distance in pixels for transition from high to low and back to high. The minimum value is 2, the Nyquist limit. In practice, the smallest value that produces usable results is about 4. The default value is 64.
X and Y normally get the same value, different values are useful for special effects. On a 1024x1024 image an X value of 1024 and a Y value of 16 produces something like wood texture. An X value of 64 and a Y value of 32 makes clouds with a bit of faked perspective.
Seed random number generator
When this box is checked (the default), a new seed is generated every time the filter is run. Different results are produced each time the filter is run. When the box is unchecked the random generator is seeded with the same value as the previous run. For identical settings each pixel will be computed identically if a new seed is not generated.
Edges fade to black
When checked (not the default) the edges of the computed region fade to black. The fade might take a full period of the lowest frequency. This setting makes nice square shaped clouds.
OUTPUT
If the image being filtered is grayscale the output is 0 to 255. If the image is RGB then the output interpotates between the foreground and background colors
MONEY
This software is free and may not be sold, I retain all of the rights. If you use ithis plug-in I'm interested in your comments, email or fax them to the destinations listed above.
