Creating a Wet and Muddy Rocks Texture with Filter Forge Photoshop plugin

Adding reflections and drama to the texture

Adding reflections is very easy: Click on the Results rectangle and on the left side of the screen you will notice two sliders:

1. Reflection.
2. Reflection Blur.

Set the Reflection slider to 100 and the Reflection blur to 78. This gives the texture a wet and muddy look.

To add more drama to the texture, we will use an old Photoshop trick. The trick goes this way:

1. You have an image or photograph.
2. Then you copy the image into another layer above the original one.
3. Then you set the Layer blending to Overlay. The image now has an enhanced illumination and more contrast. The overall contrast, lighting and saturation gives the image a dramatic look.

So now we will do the same to this texture. Go to the components list and select Operations. Then double click on the Blend icon and align it in front (to the left) of the Elevation Map rectangle.

Disconnect the Elevation Map from the Result rectangle. To disconnect it you have to drag the arrow away from the Surface Color settings of the Result rectangle and both components will be disconnected.

Then, connect the Elevation Map twice to the Blend rectangle. Once to the Background setting and the second one to the foreground setting.

Click on the Blend rectangle and go to the settings on the left side of the screen. Set the opacity to 100 (no transparency between the foreground and background) and the Mode to Overlay.

And the final touch: Connect the Blend Map to the Results component and we are done!

The image below illustrates the final diagram of the filter.

Press the Save Filter button at the bottom right of the screen and you will be returned to Filter Forge’s main window. There you will be able to see the final rendered texture in a much bigger preview and you will also be able to play with the settings. In this case, as the image below shows, the only setting we left for the end user is the Scale setting. The other settings you see, are default for every filter.

It is important to notice the differences between the Scale slider and the Size pixels slider. Due to the way we constructed the texture, the Scale slider controls the rocks size ONLY. The color map remains the same scale, so if you make changes to the Scale of the texture, you will get a different colorization which results in a different texture.

If you want to change the overall scale of the texture (color map and image at the same time) you can use the Size pixels slider.

The Variations slider is used to apply randomness to the texture, but be aware that the original concept will be lost.

The Seamless tiling checkbox is, perhaps, one of the most useful controls. It converts any texture into a seamless tile to create infinite patterns.

After making all the settings modifications you wanted, press the Apply button at the bottom right of the screen and your finished texture will be applied to your Photoshop document.

More about Filter Forge

We only scratched the surface, and I mean it. This incredible plugin is still in a Beta phase and you can expect lots of enhancements.

Take your time analyzing all the components and pre-made filters and textures to learn how to reproduce your million steps Photoshop trick.

Filter Forge can be used as both a Photoshop Plugin and a standalone application.

The people behind Filter Forge decided to go one step forward. They created a community of texture and filter designers all eager to show their creations to the world.

The prize? Fame and glory, and if you are good enough, a free copy of Filter Forge plugin.

To know how to submit a plugin, read Submitting Filters to the Filter Forge Library which was written by CFandM.

Visit Filter Forgeproduct page to learn more about it.

Please, don’t try to submit this texture o any very similar variation of it because I already did that and it will result in a duplicate submission and that is not allowed by Filter Forge quality reviewers.

Here’s the permanent filter page of the Wet and Muddy Rocks filter in Filter Forge web site.

I hope you liked this tutorial. If you have any questions or simply want to express a compliment, leave a message below. Yeah, critics and complaints are allowed too!