Creating Seamless Textures In Illustrator

Creating Seamless Textures

Tutorials | September 8th, 2010

Seamless Textures in Illustrator

Illustrator is great for creating sharp clean graphics. I used to rely on Photoshop for creating simple seamless textures for typography, web, and illustration projects. Since the updates to the Appearance panel in CS4 and the updated crisp graphics for web in CS5, I create these textures solely in Illustrator and actually, it’s really easy!

Tutorial Details

Program : Adobe Illustrator CS5 (You should be able to create this tutorial in CS4 but some of the tutorial images might look different.)
Difficulty: Beginner /Intermediate
Topics Covered: Appearance Panel, Effects, Pattern Fills, Graphic Styles
Estimated Completion Time: 15-20 minutes each

Adding Texture in Illustrator

If you have been working with illustrator for a while, you probably know that you can easily drop in a texture image, set it to multiply, and you are good to go. One of the great things about using the techniques in this tutorial is you can easily create a seamless texture without having to mask out a texture or make sure it will fit your artwork properly. Moreover, we are going to be using to Appearance panel so we can easily make a graphic style, making it easy to apply the effects to other text and vector objects.

Final Image

I know some of you are saying that using raster effects in Illustrator is cheating because its not vector art and you should just use Photoshop. You really can do whatever you want. I just have found creating these type of effects in Illustrator a lot easier and quicker. Probably one of the best reason to use Illustrator for these type of effects is the scalability of vectors even with raster effects applied. Unless you expand the effects, you can adjust your artwork without worrying about creating pixelated artwork.

Raster Effects

If you are familiar with some of the texture effects and filters in Photoshop, you will feel right at home with this technique. For these effects, I keep the Document Raster Effects Settings at 300 ppi. You can change this resolution by going Effect > Document Raster Effect Settings.

Step 1

Create a new document and create a rectangle with the Rectangle tool (M).

Raster Texture Step 1

Step 2

Take off the stroke and fill the rectangle with a linear gradient. Change the first color stop in the gradient to a greenish blue color, change the second color stop to a darker greenish blue color, and change the Angle to -90.

Raster Texture Step 2

Step 3

From the pop-up menu of the Appearance panel, choose Add New Fill. Choose the topmost fill from the Appearance panel list and change the fill to a gray color.

Raster Texture Step 3

Step 4

With the new gray fill selected in the Appearance panel, go Effect > Texture > Grain. In the Grain dialog, change the Intensity to 90, the Contrast to 50, and the Grain Type to Sprinkles. From the Appearance panel, press the arrow to the left of the title and from the sub-list, click on the Opacity link and change the Blending Mode to Multiply.

Raster Texture Step 4

Step 5

From the pop-up menu of the Appearance panel, add another New Fill like before. Make sure you have the top most fill selected, change the new fill to a radial gradient and fill both color stops with white. Change the opacity of the first white color stop to 40 and the second to 0. From the sub-menu of the new radial gradient, click Opacity, and change the Blending mode to Overlay.

Raster Texture Step 5

Step 6

That does it for the background texture, but we can add similar textures to text with the Appearance panel. Moreover, we will keep the text still editable! Start with typing out some text with the Type tool (T). I used the the font for Museo Slab 900 for the “Raster” text. Next, take off any stroke and fill from the text.

Raster Texture Step 6

Step 7

Choose Add New Fill from the pop-menu of the Appearance panel and fill it with a linear gradient. Change the first color stop to white, the second to a light gray, and change the Angle to -90.

Raster Texture Step 7

Step 8

Create another new fill from the Appearance panel and fill it with a gray color. With the new gray fill item selected in the Appearance panel, go Effects > Texture > Texturizer. In the Texturizer dialog, change the texture to Burlap, the Scaling to 200, the Relief to 50, and the Light to Top. Change the fill’s Blending Mode to Multiply and set the Opacity to 5.

Raster Texture Step 8

Step 9

Select the bottom linear gradient in the Appearance panel and go Effect > Stylize > Drop Shadow. In the Drop Shadow dialog, change the Opacity to 60, the X and Y Offset to 0 and the Blur to 1. All done with this treatment!

Raster Texture Step 9

Step 10

For the “Effects” text, I used Museo Sans 300 (I’m kinda obsessed with the Museo Family). With this treatment, take off any stroke and fill, create a new fill from the Appearance panel, change it to a linear gradient, change the first color stop of the gradient black, change the second color stop a gray color, and change the Angle to -90. Create another new fill, make sure you are editing the last fill list item in the Appearance panel, change the fill to a lighter color than your background, and go Effect > Distort & Transform > Transform. In the Transform Effect dialog, change the Vertical Move to 1. That does it for the raster texture example!

Raster Texture Step 10

Playing Around

It’s fun to play around with different texture to get to create different results. Below is taken from the Vectips tutorial Create An Editable Stitched Label Type Treatment with some basic textures added.

Raster Texture Step Playing Around

Pattern Fills

Creating this technique is pretty similar to the raster effects technique. Really, these textures are just seamless pattern fills that come stock with Illustrator, but they can create some pretty interesting results.