Tutorial Tuesday: How to create a worn leather texture in Photoshop

I found myself in an interesting position recently – a client needed a worn leather background for some print & web collateral. The client wanted a more “rustic” look – something that looked like it had been tanned, not some new-age sleek black leather monstrosity. Unfortunately, I could find ample examples of black leather, but nothing quite like what my client had envisioned.

Photoshop to the rescue!

The first thing I did was run over to my photo bag and grab my DSLR and snap a few photos of my black leather office chair. After a little monkeying around with lighting, I had a good source image:

Click for larger view

 
With the image in place, I could then add some color. I went under Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map and set my foreground and background colors to a nice, rich brown and a lighter brown:

Click for larger image

 
With the image set, I created a new layer at 43% opacity and changed my foreground color to black. I selected a brush out of one of my favorite splatter brush sets from BittBox and lightly applied it to the layer:

Click for larger image

 
Now it’s looking a bit more worn. More rustic. Almost there.

I created yet another new layer at 32% opacity and drew a new gradient, black to transparent:

Click for larger image

 
Finally, to darken the whole image, I created a final layer of 20% black opacity to overlay the canvas:

Click for larger image

 
And here is the finished product:

Click for larger image

Download the layered tutorial PSD (4.4Mb)
Download the BittBox splatter brush

Have an idea for a Photoshop tutorial? Head over to the contact form and let us know!