PS-Deform Image Along Path?

King Mango

I know this can be done with text, but is there a good way to get a strip to bend along a path? I want to make some fancy textures for the groin vaults in my cathedral and one of the things I'd like to do is have a border pattern around the ribbing like in the photo. With optimal UV layout to prevent stretching the diagonal shell borders are curved. Is it possible to make a strip of a texture and then bend it to the shape I want?

Scruples

You could probably get away with using a puppet warp, convert the layer with the design in it to a smart object first if you want to preserve your edits. Take note of the density setting in the toolbar when you are manipulating the puppet warp too.

Illustrator would be ideal for something like this but I've never heard of anyone using it to make textures.

pior

I think the only way to achieve this in PS would be ... to apply the pattern as a texture to an imported 3D shape hehe But really, that's kindof pointless - you'd be better off tiling it as a straight strip in your texture map and apply that to the geometry with straight UVs. As a matter of fact, the specific example you posted looks as if there would be very little deformation or stretching involved.

Maybe look at the environments of Uncharted2 for reference ?

Computron

Illustrator would be perfect for those types of patterns, and you can stroke tiling patterns along other vector patterns.