In this particular article we would like to give you a background and explain how these textures were created from start to finish, just as we handle each and every physical piece of leather in our collection individually to match our requirements of impeccable quality.
Leather has been around throughout the history of mankind. In essence, it was animal hides that helped our ancestors to withstand the harsh environment and further progress and develop, eventually replacing leather with wool, silk and other fabric.
Even to this day leather is around us, but as a luxury or decoration element to serve our comfort. Certainly it's been replaced by more convenient means of clothing/dressing, but it doesn't mean it can be completely replaced, but rather innovated. We at Sorensen Leather like to think of leather as a valuable resource that needs to be taken care of with great attention and in return it will serve us well and perhaps even outlive its owner.
For over 40 years we have specialised in leather and hides of superior quality, and as of late we have stepped into a digital medium, carrying the same mindset for providing high standard material. By creating over 300 photos of our leather articles and making them into high resolution seamless textures, we have marked this transition, and now we want to share the labor of our hard work with the rest of the world for FREE.
Step 1. Considering that we have 25 leather articles at our disposal, where each of them can hold up to 79 leather samples in various colours per article, our first task was to collect all of these individual leather samples from their respective articles and put them in a queue for being prepared for image processing.
Step 2. Simultaneously, non-least essential step was setting up the camera that would capture the most fundamental features of the leather, such as its own unique grain, natural markings (when present) and size. In fact, the size of these textures is only 1/2, 1/3 or even 1/4 of the actual leather hide. But we will get back to it further below.
To achieve this, we had to set up the camera under a perfect 90 degree angle, attached to a camera stand with a fixed distance from the leather sample to capture all the requisites mentioned above. Naturally, it was a correlation between the camera itself and uniform lighting source that was used to transform physical leather into a digital file. Due to the camera settings and parameters, the end result gave these textures a 5760x3840 dimension at 300 dpi.
Step 3. Before pushing the 'capture' button on the camera, the leather samples were examined throughout for any stains, unwanted wrinkles, folds and other obscurance. As mentioned, the textures that were generated are not the full hide, but rather a certain area of it. The part of the leather that met the satisfactory level was selected to be captured by the camera. That particular section of the leather was then stretched out and fixed perfectly on a flat surface, while preserving its grain.
Step 4. Once we had the digital version of our leather, it was then forwarded to a color correction procedure, which was yet another necessity to be carried out for perfect leather sample duplication. The texture and the physical leather itself had to share the exact same colour in a standard screen light spectrum.
Step 5. After that we had over three hundred .tif format files, fully eligible to be called as our actual leather samples in a digital format. But they were not seamless. There are many techniques and ways of making a texture into seamless, but our choice of preference fell onto Photoshop where we, again, went through each and every texture individually to remove the seam. In all honesty, it required a lot of time, but the end result was definitely worth it and we are fully satisfied with our seamless leather textures.
Feel free to check out the real deal on our website at Sorensen Leather.
