"Curving" a texture

Okay, basically I have a nice texture that tiles great horizontally, however, I want to use it along a curved shape. What I'm looking for is a feature in Photoshop that allows me to easily take the texture and curve it to fit.

Here's a diagram that might help explain:



The outer lines are the shape itself, the inner line is the curve of the texture to fit.

If someone could explain, or has links to a tutorial that explains how to curve textures in this way, it would be greatly appreciated!

Photoshop CS might have nicer tools to do this, but in older versions (I'm working with 5.0) you'd have to use the Curve Bend filter. Can be found under Filters --> Distorts --> Curve Bend (I hope my translation is right since I'm working with a german version of PS).

The Bend filter only works in horizontal direction, so you'll likely have to rotate your image by 90 degrees and rotate it back afterwards. Make sure you leave enough empty space around the image area that you want to distort.

I think you might be refering to the "Shear" filter. It does exactly this.

I use the transform tool. Ctrl+T and you'll see an arc shaped button near the top bar, push that and it attaches points to the image so you can bend it all sorts of shapes.

Yeah, the Warp tool. just what i was going to suggest. I dont know if older versions of CS have this tool, but it is extremely useful in making whatever shape you could want. It might take a little practice if you are unfamiliar with the normal CS tools. The warp tool has handles much like the pen tool does that are used to create bends. i know a lot of Photoshop novices have trouble with the pen tool, but it just takes a little patience.

The warp tool is wonderful, but I'm afraid it's also new with CS2.

Earlier versions of PS didn't have it; but it you have PS CS2, Haravikk, it's really easy.

You don't need to worry about the control handles, since what you want is a simple, symmetrical shape. It's in the presets.

First, you'll need to give yourself more room on your canvas, of course.

Then select your shape, and tap Command/ctrl T to transform. When the Transform Options come up, click on the Warp icon on the far right of the Options bar, just before the Cancel, Accept, Bridge etc. buttons. (I've shown it below outlined in yellow below, although I cut out quite a bit of the bar, to save space.) That will change the whole bar to what you see here.



Choose Arch from the drop-down menu after the word "Warp." That will give you the correct shape. Click on the word "Bend" and drag right and left to interactively change the bend amount, or type the amount into the field, if you know it already.

If the bend is going the wrong way, type the minus sign before the number, to bend the other way, and then drag.

If you need a "side" bend, instead of a "top or bottom" bend, click the "filp" button just to the right of the Warp menu.

It's simple, with CS2.

Hope this helps!

Oh my, now I want CS2 I love the pen tool in CS, and if I understand correctly, the warp tool would allow me to use a pen-like functionality with everything I want... Oh boy. I want.

... Can we move Christmas to next week, this year ?