How to Create a Linen Texture in Photoshop

Hello everyone! I hope that everyone had a fantastic holiday season! We had a lovely time, but it was (and still is) extremely hot here. I’m permanently working with my little desk fan on. 🙂 I know this sounds strange to some people who have never had a warm Christmas 😀

So back to today’s post. The other day I was looking for a linen texture online but couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for. So I found a tutorial that showed you how to create your own linen texture in Photoshop. This was so easy that I wanted to share this technique with you also, but with my own spin on it. BTW, this technique will work in any version of Photoshop.

The great thing about making your own linen texture is that you can make it in any colour you wish!

Let’s get started. In Photoshop, create a new document. The size depends on you. Let’s make it 500 x 500 pixels with a resolution of 72 and RGB colour mode. If you are going to be printing your texture, choose CMYK colour mode with a resolution of 300.

Create a new layer by going to Layer – New Layer. Pick the rectangle tool and draw a rectangle around your artboard. It should extend beyond the borders of your artboard. Give this rectangle a fill using the colour of your choice. I’m using #e2d7c0. To fill the rectangle shape, just double click on its layer thumbnail in the layers panel.

Now we are going to start adding texture. Still selecting your rectangle, go to Filter – Noise – Add noise. You will get a pop-up that asks to either rasterize or convert your shape to a smart object. Click convert to smart object. Use the following settings for the noise:

Now we are going to make streaks of this noise texture by blurring it. Go to Filter – Blur – Motion Blur and give it the following settings:

We are almost there! We are now going to make the streaks go in the opposite direction. Click on your rectangle layer and duplicate it by right-clicking and choosing Duplicate Layer. We just need to edit the motion blur of this layer. To do that, double click on “motion blur” in the layer’s palette.

Give this motion blur an angle of 90 degrees.

Now we have two rectangles on top of one another but we can’t see the bottom one. All you have to turn down the top rectangle’s opacity. Let’s change it to 50% and see how it looks.

And there you have it! A beautiful linen texture to add some interest to your designs. You can download and use the texture below if you want! Enjoy!