Make a Simple Wooden Texture in the Gimp

Learn how to make a quick and simple wooden texture in The Gimp

Step 1: Ready the Canvas!

Open up The Gimp and create a new project (File -> new...).

Set up your canvas by selecting the height and width. I chose 300x300 because it has alot of space to work with and its a square so it'll be easier to tile.

Then select the fill bucket tool and choose a shade of brown for the base.

Then, fill the 300x300 canvas with the brown color using the fill bucket.

Step 2: Make Some Noise!

Ad some noise to the image to give it a grainy look. ( Filters -> Noise -> scatter HSV...)

Then, mess with the settings to get a nice bummpy(-ish) look.

Soon after you need to create some motion blur to give it that nice wood grain look. ( Filters -> Motion blur...)

Step 3: Look Sharp!

Make this a tilable image by selecting Filters -> map -> make seamless..., isn't that nifty?

The seamless function blurs some areas of the texture so you'll need to sharpen the image. ( Filters -> Enhance -> Sharpen...)

Step 4: Make It Bumpy

Next, you need to duplicate the layer, desaturate the duplicate, and use it as a bump map to the color version. This step descrbes these actions and how to do them, advaced users can do this quickly and skip to step 5. But for all you novices, listen up!

Duplicate the layer: Layer -> Duplicate layer.

Desaturate the duplicate: Layer -> Colors -> Desaturate

Bump map: First, select the original layer. Dialogs -> layers, click on the colored layer. Then, use the desaturated layer as a bump map Filters -> map -> bump map...

Now, all you need to do is delete the desaturated layer. Using the layer dialog select the B&W layer and delet it by pressing the trash can button.

Step 5: Stain the Wood

If you are not quite satasfied with this texture's color, for example if it is to bright, I have a nice way to stain it and make it a little darker.. its funny how this works in real life and on the computer.

First, select the paint brush and a black color.

Set the mode of the brush to 'overlay' and paint where you want to stain the wood texture.

Wala! You have a beautiful seamles wood texture!