Realistic Moss

Learn how to create the moss that was used in v5 of MickM.com!

• Step 1 Take the colors #688D46 and #27470A as your palette-colors and go to Filter>Render>Clouds;

  

• Step 2 Go to Filter>Render>Difference Clouds and press CTRL+F a few times;

  

• Step 3 Press CTRL+U and change the settings;

  

  

• Step 4 Go to Filter>Disort>Diffuse Glow and set the settings to make it look like mine;

  

• Step 5 Go to Filter>Artistic>Palette Knife and play with the settings;

  

• Step 6 Then add a low plastic wrap with Filter>Artistic>Plastic Wrap;

  

• Step 7 Go to Filter>Artistic>Film Grain and set the settings quite low so that it looks like my image;

  

• Step 8 Go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise and add some noise;

  

• Step 9 Press CTRL+D and use the Burn- and Dodge-Tool to make some area's darker;

  

• Step 10 Now you could also choose to make the moss have more reliëf, but that is done different;
  Go to Filter>Render>Lightning Effects and set the bottom menu to green;
  You also need to fiddle around with the thumbnail and the angle of the lightning... But that is different in every image;
  Only do this step if you want the reliëf. I for one, did not use it, therefore it's up to you if you use it!

  

• Step 11 Create a new layer and fill it with black;

  

• Step 12 Go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise and set the slider to maximum;

  

• Step 13 Add Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and make it look fuzzy;

  

• Step 14 Press CTRL+L and create shapes of your liking;

  

• Step 15 Delete the white background with the Magic Wand-Tool;

  

  

• Step 16 Now here comes the hard part:
  What you can do now is copy the pieces of moss and repeat step 11-15. What I did was simple... in theory. I placed the full image of the moss that we had after step 9 and used a grunge-brush as an eraser to erase parts.
  I made 3 layers, one darker, one lighter and the other with a gradient. I earsed parts from all 3 layers and made sure it looked mossey and rusty.