Textures can really enhance the mood or the feel of an image. People that follow me and my photography know I love using textures in my work. So, it was an absolute no brainer to test out the Infinite Texture Panel.

There’s no shortage of Textures around the internet these days… but what if you had access to the largest database of high-resolution textures with a click of a button? Sounds cool right? This is exactly what the Infinite Texture Panel does. Be prepared to be amazed!

How the panel works

The Infinite Texture Panel is a collaboration between Stefan Kohler, Conny Wallstrom and Pratik Naik, 3 well-known names in the business. They created a panel that takes the process of textures overlays on a photo and reverses it. Instead of looking for a texture, you click a big Create button and randomly handed a relevant texture. If you like it, you can retrieve a higher resolution version of it. If not, you can ask for a new texture. With each new request, you can decide how similar or different the next texture will be to the previous one. This is a very different process to browsing a list of endless textures and really opens up your creative vision.

Those textures are partly coming from the old Rawexchange store and are partly new. If you remember that store, it used to have textures with an insane resolution and variety. Sadly, the store closed down, but I guess this is where all the files went.

The textures are organized into 4 categories: Elements, Particles, Lights and Overlays. The first thing you do is to select the type of texture you want and hit Create. The engine will fetch a low-resolution image for you. Now you can ask for another file, but before you do that you can use the randomness slider. When set to low, you will get a texture very similar to the last texture. When set to high, you would get a texture very different from the one you selected. Of course, there is everything in between…

You can iterate through this process as many times as you like. Once you’re happy you click on the High Res button and the low-resolution sample will be replaced by a high-resolution file.

The AI.MATCH engine

The Infinite Texture Panel has a AI.MATCH feature! Let’s explore some ways of using the AI.MATCH feature!

Sometimes you come across a texture you really like but it’s not available to be used for either personal or commercial work. This is where the AI.MATCH engine comes in. Load the texture you like into Photoshop and use it to fill the frame. Press the AI button and the Infinite Texture Panel will look through the database to present you with a texture very similar to the one you picked. All the textures in the Infinite Texture Panel come with full and clear commercial rights for personal and professional use.

Here is another use-case that blew my mind. Whenever I’m editing, I will play around with color glows by painting them in. The Infinite Texture Panel takes this to a new level. Once you are done painting or scribbling your idea on a separate layer, the AI will find a matching texturing to your drawing. Here is a quick demo of how this works:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dTyvMabOfA

The AI Visualizer

The AI.Visualizer is a way to browse textures. It gives you a grid with 35 textures. The texture is the center is the one you select as your favorite. And the textures around it are textures similar to it. Remember the randomness slider? this interface ha a similar slider. If you set it to “low” you will get 35 very similar textures. If you set it to “high”, you would get very different textures. It actually works in the same way as in the actual panel. The lower the number, the closer match you will get to the texture you picked in the center. Then you can choose any of the textures on the grid to be a new center and move through the database in a very visual way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DCsxgz_F40

My testing

I already edited a few photos with this panel. Slide left and right to see what the Infinite Texture Panel added to each of the photos.

Test 1 – A Star Trek Homage (mostly flares)

Test 2 – A Viking (sparks and particels)

Test 3 – a full shoot zombie shot

Conclusion

I’m a very skeptic person when it comes down to extensions, plugins, and actions… I have to say that the Infinite Texture Panel blew me away, especially the AI.MATCH feature. It costs $149 (discounted from $199) and considering it provides access to the entire collection that used to be hosted on Rawexchange, it’s an awesome deal.

Here’s a live edit I did using the Infinite Texture Panel: https://www.facebook.com/DigiSteve/videos/2201620256800179/

P.S. if you want more information about the panel, here is an intro by Pratik Naik, one of the founders of the panel.

About the Author

Steve Thewis (a.k.a. DigiSteve) is a photographer, retoucher and digital artist from the UK. You can check more of his work on his site, and instagram, and connect via twitter and facebook