Thursday, April 22, 2010

Textures

I always love the way the addition of textures adds to a picture. Ever since I discovered the technique I've been fascinated with it. There are plenty of web sites where you can find free textures, probably just as many who will sell you some or you can make them yourself. Since I'm all about free and do it yourself, making them is right up my alley. I suppose I could just whip up a download and give you some of the ones I've done but instead I'm going to tell you how I went about making my most recent one.

I started by choosing some pictures.
First I opened up the grass picture I showed you the other day.
Then I went to file>place and chose my second picture
I changed the blending mode on this to hard light and turned the opacity down to about 80%. Then again I went to file>place and chose a third picture
This time I changed the blending mode to hue and left the opacity at 100%. I normally just keep scrolling through the different blending modes until I find something that looks good to me. It's not always the same ones but my favorites seem to be either soft light, overlay and multiply. As you can see this time I didn't use any of those but this is what looked the best this time around. You can also use an eraser to erase parts of a picture that may seem a bit too distracting or don't seem to fit well with the look your going for.
The next step was to merge the layers together. Now I could have left it as is but I chose to do one more thing which was to lower the saturation.  You can do that by either hitting cntrl+U on your keyboard or by using a hue/saturation adjustment layer. After all this there was nothing left to do but to save the file.

So lets test it out now and see how it looks on a photo. 
 I opened up this picture then went to file > place and located the texture I had just made. With the new texture as the second layer I changed it's blending mode to soft light and now the above picture looks like this.

And there you have it. Of course you could lower the opacity on the texture layer to give it a more subtle look. It all just depends on what you like. So go ahead and pull out some of those pictures you have that you don't think are good for anything and start playing around with them. You just might be surprised at what amazing textures you can come up with.

26 comments:

Sandee said...

I didn't do very well on mine. They have all kinds of neat stuff in Photobucket (I don't have Photoshop), and I messed up every one I touched. I told you I don't have a crafty bone in my body. I so appreciate those that do though.

Have a terrific day. My best to Duke. :)

Christine ~ JAZ Creations said...

Very good idea Ann! Thanks for reminding me! I do not play with my textures and effects nearly enough and I plan on finding the time to play.

GratefulPrayerThankfulHeart said...

Looks good! I love playing with textures too but I just don't have enough time! I took so many photos this week while my daughter and family were visiting plus all of the beautiful flowers blooming. I'll be forever editing them.

Nice tutorial, Ann!
Kindly, ldh

Unknown said...

I love textures too. Recently discovered and now I can't seem to get enough of them. Nice work!

BeadedTail said...

I'm not sure what you said but I like how it turned out - especially the flowers!

The Urban Cowboy said...

That's pretty awesome. I have a hard enough time getting my pictures web friendly, I might try experimenting sometime.

Lin said...

Okay, so I'm gonna try this one of these days. I need a free day where I have some time to play and that is escaping me these days. Thanks for the encouragement to try though!

Buggys said...

Yes, but you have photoshop! Absolutely fabulous.

VanillaSeven said...

I love how you blended that tree bark and the grass! Interesting texture!

Anonymous said...

And in English that means? LOL

tahtimbo said...

What was that middle thing again?
It is just fantastic that you can do things like that. I have a feeling that if I ever tried to be creative, a black hole would be created in the living room and suck the computer away, thus sparing civilisation (love that British spelling) the results of my creativity :)

allotments4you said...

wow that's fantastic Ann...not sure I totally followed what you did..(don't exactly have a knack for this sort of thing)...but I love the texture you cane up with and then once you have added it to the photo it has that aged appearance. Can't wait to see what else you come up with!

Audrey said...

I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about - but it looks amazing!
LOVE what you did with the bottom photo :)

Marg said...

That is a great lesson Ann. Now I have to figure out how to do it all. I guess you are using Photoshop and I don't have that. But I would love to try that.
Have a great day.

Unknown said...

So, is this how all of the environmentalist wackos come up with all of those graphic pictures of the effects of pollution? Yeah, I think I need to tell Rush and Glenn about this. Would you be available for an interview if Fox News calls?

Reeni said...

It sounds like you really have to know what your doing! But it looks fun. I like how your picture turned out!

CraftCrave said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Tammy said...

What fun. I wish I even knew what you are talking about. I would love to do more with my photo's.

Donna said...

AlRight now! That better be in my PS7 book!!Hahaaa
Great Job Miz Ann!
Happy weekend to you!
hughugs

Joanne Olivieri said...

Ann, this is right up my alley. I love playing around with photos. I really like the finished product. You did a great job.

Ann said...

Sandee, I used to have photobucket before I got photoshop elements and believe me I've messed up a lot of pictures myself.

Christine thanks, I probably play too much :)

LDH I should be out taking more pictures but I haven't picked up my camera much lately

DKMiller I'm hooked on them. I think they look great but when I show one to my husband he always says he likes the original better. MEN!

Beaded tail that's ok I'm not always sure of what I say either :)

urban cowboy thanks, it took me a while to figure all this stuff out but I'm hooked now

Lin do you ever get free days? you always seem so busy.

Buggys, aside from photoshop there are some programs that are free that can do the same things. I wish I could remember what the one is that is almost identical.

Vanilla seven thanks, I thought it looked pretty good.

Grace, sorry didn't mean to use a foreign language. But hey at least I included pictures :)

tahtimbo lol I doubt that your wife would be happy with a black hole in the middle of the living room so you better stick with cooking :)

allotments4you you won't have to wait long I have some more stuff coming up. I love the way pictures look when they don't look brand new :)

Audrey thanks

Marg I use photoshop elements which is the cheap version of photoshop., but like I said in another comment there are free programs available that can do this too

Cinnamon girl I don't know if I always know what I'm doing but sometimes my experiments come out quite good

craft crave why thank you very much

b boys mom once I started doing this and got the hang of it I've been totally hooked

Donna well I don't know if it's in your book or not but it's really pretty easy to do. Just start playing that's pretty much how I learned it all. Trial and error.

Poetic shutterbug thank you very much. So will we be seeing some photos with texture on your blog?...lol

Ann said...

Fishhawk, how did I miss your comment up there. This could be exactly how it's done and reason not to believe everything you see in pictures. I would be most happy to do an interview. I'll watch my caller ID for Fox

Lenox Knits said...

I just bought PS Elements. I can't wait to start playing with it. This post gives me some real ideas. I wish I had it here today.

Ann said...

Lenox Knits, oh Paige you are going to have a blast with it. Can't wait to see what you post once you get going with it.

gayle said...

I love the picture you did! You make it sound so easy but it looks really hard!! Maybe this summer I will give it a try ( while I am off)

Ann said...

Gayle, it is easy once you get it all figured out. I had a heck of a time figuring it out when I first got my program though :)

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