How to Make a Camouflage Texture in Photoshop

With the image editor Adobe Photoshop, you have the ability to recreate a plethora of fabric textures. One that has become more popular over the years is camouflage. It can be used in any industrial or urban design as well as in 3D games with war themes. This How to Make Camouflage in Photoshop tutorial will show you one way of making a realistic version..

The techniques used in this how to are not exclusive to Photoshop alone. If you are using an alternate image program such as Gimp or Paint Shop Pro, you should be able to follow the same steps. Depending on your experience using layer masks and channels, this tutorial will take anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes to complete.

To begin, you need to make a new document and lay down your base color.

1. Create a new document by typing Ctrl+N.
2. Set the width and height to 500 pixels and give the file a transparent background.
3. Name the transparent layer base.
4. Fill the layer with the color #597a71.

This step will give your camouflage its distinctive look. You'll create four different splotches and layer them together to achieve the final effect.

1. Use Shift + Ctrl + N to add a new layer. Name it temp1.
2. Change your foreground color to white and the background to black.
3. Go to Filter -> Render -> Clouds.
4. Then, open Image -> Adjustments -> Threshold. (This will flatten out the values to just black and white.)
5. Select all of the layer and copy it with Ctrl + C.
6. Switch to the channels window by going to Windows -> Channels.
7. Click the new channel icon at the bottom of the interface and paste your splotch picture into it.
8. Invert the image with Ctrl + I.
9. Add blur by picking Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur. Enter 1%.
10. Open Image -> Adjustments -> Levels and drag the gray arrow all the way to the same position as the white one. This rounds out the edges of the splotch.
11. Ctrl click this channel to make a selection, then return to the layers window.
12. Make a new layer called splotch1.
13. Fill it with the color #546964.
14. Delete layer temp1 since you don't need it any longer.
15. Repeat all the above steps with the following colors: #a4978e, 3f3c43, and 7d7068. Name the new layers splotch2, splotch3 and splotch4.
16. Now, you should have four separate splotch layers.

Now, you will make a final texture and apply it to a sample cloth to see it in action.

1. Select all of your document and go to Edit -> Copy Merged.
2. Add grain to the layer by picking Filter -> Noise -> Add Noise. Choose Gaussian and Monochromatic at 4%.
3. Make a new layer named cloth then drag it under your camouflage picture.
4. Using the gradient tool, fill the background with a black to white transition. This tool can be accessed with the shortcut G.
5. Change the mode on the tool to Difference then make a few short horizontal drags. This layer will represent a cloth texture you can blend with your camouflage.
6. Change the layer blend mode to Overlay. Blend modes are located in the top left corner of the layer window.
7. Go to Image -> Image Size and shrink width and height by 50%.