Creating Textures in Metabrush
How cool is MetaBrush? You can created many textures from a single photo. Here I give some examples of the variety of textures possible simply by varying a few settings. I use Brushes/Paint mode in each case, which allows you to choose a brush image for your texture. This means you will be painting your texture with your brush image as "paint"!
I start by opening an image in MetaBrush that has the pixel dimensions I want. This sets the size for the canvas. Then I selected Brushes then Paint at the top left of the screen. I touched the circle just above the circle with a flower icon, on the top left side of the screen. A color picker comes up, and I selected black. Then I touched the layer icon on the top right of the screen, it looks like 3 horizontal layers. I touched the rightmost paint can icon, this fills the image layer with black. So now you should see a single layer that is filled with black.
Now touch the flower-circle icon on the top left of the screen: your camera roll comes up. Select a photo. This is your brush image.
Now touch the brush settings icon on the top right of the screen, it is the one that looks like three sliders. Under Basic, set the spacing slider to its maximum value. Touch the Variances button and set both variance sliders to their maximum values. Leave the dynamics sliders alone. Set the Extra sliders at zero for now. Later you will want to experiment with using the Structure slider under Extras.
Now tap the brush icon on the top right of the screen, it looks like a paintbrush. Choose a brush. Now paint. Undo if you don't like it and choose another brush. Keep going and you will create lots of beautiful textures. When I get one I want to keep, I export it using the arrow on the top right of the screen. Then I undo and make another texture. Don't forget to try different Structure settings. Also try using the Size and Opacity sliders on the left side of the screen.
Now for some examples. In the next several examples, I will use this photo from Pixabay as brush image. Pixabay is a source of copyright-free images.
I used all the settings I mentioned above. The brush I selected is the Basic 7/25 brush at 100% opacity, large size. In the following example, I will keep all the same settings, only changing the brush.
Brush: Basic 7/25, medium size, less than 100% opacity.
Brush: INKB 4/24, medium size. 100% opacity, Structure at the maximum setting.
Similar to the above, but I used two different brushes.
Brush: INKB 11/24, medium size, 100% opacity, maximum Structure
In the next several examples, I will use this photo from Pixabay as brush image. I cropped it to roughly a square before using it as a brush image.
I used all the settings I mentioned above. The brush I selected is the Basic 7/25 at 100% opacity, large size.
Brush: DryTwo 1/42 100% opacity, large size
Brush: Tech 6/17 100% opacity, large size, Extras sliders set to their maximum values
Brush: Artisk 13/13 100% opacity, medium size. I used the Extra sliders.
Brush: Artisk 12/13 100% opacity, medium size. I used the Extra sliders.
Brush: Gradient 20/32 100% opacity, large size, Extra sliders set to zero.
Brush: Scribla 12/12 100% opacity, medium size, Extra sliders set to zero.
I use these textures I made from blueberries and other photos in my iColorama creations, for example this one.
And this one. You can see how I made this one here.
Note: When you select an image to use as a brush image, Metabrush squeezes the image into a square, before applying the brush shape that you choose from the brush menu under the brush icon. This means if you select a rectangular image as brush image, the images in the painted texture may look squashed or elongated. You can see this in my first set of examples, above, because I selected a rectangular photo of blueberries as brush image in those examples. Depending on what you are after, this may or may not be an issue. If it matters for your image, then you should crop your images to roughly a square before using them as brush images.
Take a look at my follow-on tutorial to this one, More Patterns in Metabrush, where I show how to make more regularly spaced patterns.