How to create a concrete surface texture to use as background

Question

I am trying to achieve this noisy background behind the cards. How can I recreate this effect?

Answer 1

Take a photograph of a concrete slab or purchase a photograph of concrete from any number of stock photography sites.

There's no reason to spend time and effort to recreate something if a simple photo will work. Often the photo works better anyway.

Answer 2

It looks like a concrete or recycled paper texture. The best option is probably to use a Photoshop brush over a light gray background layer.

Some ideas:

• Hard concrete Photoshop brushes

• Concrete textures

• Paper textures

Answer 3

I'd go with a simple tileable texture that you can expand or contract as needed. It's easy to repurpose that way and doesn't eat much disk space.

Try SubtlePatterns.com. Atle Mo creates and curates a very nice set of patterns there, some of which would work perfectly for this task.