Thin lines on seamless images (seen when tiled)

[CatoPbx]

What can I do to remove the very fine feint lines that all my Photoshop images have, when they are tiled? (see screen shot below, the vertical & horizontal centre lines, when I tested with the filter > offset to check the seamless result).

This is evident when the image is viewed at high zoom when tiled, or by using the offset settings to see the result of the "seamless" image. The tiling is just out by a bit, but enough to not be perfectly seamless.

I have tested using all image formats and no/different compressions, and with backgrounds included, and with anti-aliasing, and with bilinear, exporting/importing formats, duplicating and merging, changing the colour profiles, but nothing has worked so far. And the textures are definitely created perfectly seamless.

[Dioni González]

You can try with the Content-Aware option.
Make a selection of something more than the vertical line. Then go to Edit > Fill ... in the drop-down menu select Content-Aware and press Ok. This will fill the selection content with pixels similar to those around.

[CatoPbx]

Hi, the content aware was not "fine" enough result for my selection. I found it worked best with motion blur, and then gaussian blur down the centre/horizontal lines, really low value. Some deep-etching still required to perfect - would still prefer to just not have the "lines" that Photoshop puts in the images.

[davescm]

Hi

I am puzzled with your first and last statements.

The last says "the textures are created seamless". The first that they show an issue when offset?

Are these the same textures or have you processed them in some way to turn them from being seamless to show the issue above?

Regardless - the normal way in Photoshop is to create a texture then offset it at 50% length and height (as you have done) then repair it along the centre cross (previous edges) with the clone tool.

Note : There is an issue with generating normal maps from a seamless texture that requires the above repair. However a quick way is to create a normal from the seamless texture and a second from the offset texture. Then use a mask to overlay the centre cross of the offset version above the regular map before flattening. This gives a very quick repair to the normal map.

Dave

[CatoPbx]

Hi, the textures were created in texture creation specific software, then I brought the images into Photoshop for further work (colouring, making into patterns, etc). The textures tiled perfectly in the software, but not in Photoshop. I tried with 2 different texture software, still the same result in Photoshop. (I would prefer to not have to muck around too much with repairing the images, when they were great to start with originally). I could just use the exported images from the texture software I suppose, and do all the colouring work etc in that, but then I don't have the option of making patterns for Photoshop.

[davescm]

Hi

So the problem is either in the Export from the other software  or the Import into Photoshop.

How are you bringing them into Photoshop and what type of file are they?

Dave

[CatoPbx]

Hi, I exported them as images from the other software - tried JPEG, TIFF, GIF in different sizes. Just dropped them into Photoshop, some needed resizing, some didn't. But still that frustrating "hairline" appears.

[davescm]

Use File - Open rather than dropping them onto an existing document.

If it will not tile on opening (i.e. before doing any processing / resizing or any other manipulation) it sounds like an issue with the export.

Can you link to an example. Preferably a TIFF where there is no image compression.

Dave

[CatoPbx]

I'll do some testing, and get back to you tomorrow.

[WILDCAT54]

What are the dimensions of the tiles? Ive had an issue bring vector images from Ai to Ps as a smart object and having to deal with these faint lines. I was able to fix the issue by rounding the dimensions up or down to the nearest 10px dimension, For example, your tile is 236x236 - you would want to resize to 230x230.

[CatoPbx]

THANKS to everyone who provided info. I will use it all in the future.

[CatoPbx · Accepted solution]

This just worked for me: TIFF with no compression at same size as canvas, drop or file>open into Photoshop. Cross my fingers that this will be the solution ... Thanks for the suggestion!

[davescm]

Good to hear. Hopefully you now have a working process

Dave

[CatoPbx · Accepted solution]

I should have updated this answer a lot sooner. I found that Photoshop will show those annoying little white lines around the border seams on any seamless image that you want to turn into a Pattern (using the Edit > Define Pattern) EXCEPT when you leave the image the original size, preferably making the pattern from the original image, not by copying & pasting the image into Photoshop. You must be careful to not change the original image size when making a pattern. After you have made the pattern, you can then use the pattern in a Photoshop document (of any dimensions), and move the position and/or resize the pattern contents without any of those horrible fine white lines showing. 

[Norman Sanders]

If your final image can tolerate symmetry, select one of the panels (I chose the lower left), make 3 dupe layers and by using Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal or Flip Vertical, you can eliminate the seams.