How to Make a Leather Texture in Photoshop

Leather is a material that has a multitude of uses in every genre of design. It can be used effectively in everything from chic, high art advertisements to gritty, grunge 3D video games. You can find it in countless amounts of colors and sheens. This How to Make a Leather Texture in Photoshop tutorial will show you one method of creating it.

This how to is appropriate for all skill levels. However, you should have a working knowledge of Photoshop's tool set before beginning it. With Adobe Photoshop, you will be able to make this leather by replicating authentic colors for the texture, manipulating the stained glass filter and finishing with a layer style. It should take 5 to 10 minutes to complete.

Start off by opening a new document and filling the first layer with a color mixture that is realistic to the material.

1. Create a new document by typing Ctrl+N.
2. Set the width and height to 1000 pixels and give the file a transparent background.
3. Name the transparent layer baseColor.
4. Change your foreground color to 591112 and the background to 79140c.
5. Go to Filter -> Render -> Clouds.

Now, you want to mimic the skin cells found on leather. Initially, they will look rather large. But, you'll take care of that when you resize the image down later.

1. Use Shift + Ctrl + N to add a new layer. Name it tempCells.
2. Change your foreground color to white and the background to black.
3. Fill the layer with white.
4. Then, make the foreground color black.
5. Pick Filter -> Texture -> Stained Glass. Enter the following input: Cell Size: 2, Border Thickness: 1, Light Intensity: 0.
6. With tempCells active, use Select -> Color Range. Make sure Sampled Colors is selected then just click a white area of the layer to get a selection.
7. Add a new layer and fill the selection with white on that layer. Call it skinCells.
8. You can either hide or delete tempCells since you no longer need it.
9. Add a Drop Shadow and Bevel and Emboss layer style. (Refer to the image below for settings.)
10. Lower the Fill on skinCells to 10%. It's located in the top right corner of the layer window.

To see your texture in action, you should place it in a new document then reduce the size. After that, you will make a sample cloth so that you can view the effect.

1. Select all of your original document and go to Edit -> Copy Merged.
2. Save and close the old file.
3. Paste the image into a new document.
4. Go to Image -> Image Size and shrink the width and height of your new document by 50%.
5. Make a new layer named cloth then drag it under your leather.
6. Using the gradient tool, fill the background with a black to white transition. This tool can be accessed with the shortcut G.
7. 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 texture.
8. Change the layer blend mode to Overlay. Blend modes are located in the top left corner of the layer window.