My Top Ten PSP Texture Tools List
To all the aspiring texture designers :
Here's my list of the most useful tools to make good textures. Unfortunately, I can't tell
you how to use them all to their greatest effectiveness. That just takes practise. But at
least knowing they are there will get you playing around. I use hyphens(-) to denote
moving around the drop down menus.
1. Adjust-Color-Hue/Saturation/Lightness. I spend a lot of time here deciding between what
is washed out or too bright.
2. The Magic Wand Tool. The single most essential tool to give you control over what
pixels you are changing with the other tools. Ignore it at your peril.
3. Color Replacement Tool. Very good for getting the lime green out of your lighter
colored pixels. Always used with the MW. Gives you different options depending on whether
you are in 256 or 16 mill color. Also very useful with some of # 6 below.
4. The Retouch Tool (little hand) There are a number of useful adjustments available here.
Used with the MW, you can sensitively adjust a number of things like hue, sharpness,
lightness etc.
5. The Freehand Selection Tool. Copying parts of your texture to another part is very
important in getting it to look right. Good for tiling problems and just covering over
parts that you don't like with parts you do. Also mow lines creation.
6.Image-Blur-Gaussian Blur. I didn't know about this one for a long time, but it is a
great tool for tastefully blending in overbright colors. Usually used with MW. Much better
than any of the other blurring tools.
7. Layers - New. Using layers allows you much freedom to work on an area independently and
control how much it shows up using the opacity slider. Occasionally one texture has gone
right over another this way, but there are many creative uses for them.
8. Adjust-Color-Brightness/Contrast. This, as well as a few other Color controls, is
frequently useful to keep a texture from being too washed out or the other way too.
9. Cloning Tool. Very useful for altering your image. Good for tiling problems
especially, but also for general creativity.
10. Noise. Be careful with this baby. It can be marginally useful, but only in carefully
measured amounts.
An honorable mention goes to the Image-Effects-Drop Shadow. I don't use this a
lot, but it has done some neat things. First you select a color in the foreground or
background color of the color palette. Then you must select an area with the MW, then play
with the DS controls and check out your result. Can be quite dramatic, for the better or
worse. Can give rough depth.
There you go. My only other advice is ..don't let your eyes fool you and be a
perfectionist. What looks good today won't tomorrow, and you have to keep working towards
something that you know is realistic looking. The rewards will be worth it. Have fun!
Paul
