Tech Tuesday #2 – Texture

Every Tuesday will not contain a Photoshop/Elements lesson because I could not put that kind of obligation on myself, but I was fooling around with this today and I thought I may as well share.

I found a website where a Brazilian designer gives away a texture each Tuesday.

I thought that was nicely coincidental.

Here is the link:

http://abduzeedo.com/tuesday-total-textures-104

There are quite a few Textures on that page to choose from, and she has many more in the archives.

What do you do with textures?

That is a good question, and I can give you a couple of answers. Your own creative instincts will give you plenty more, I am sure.

I downloaded this Texture from the site.

Although the Textures offered are 300ppi, the size is only about 2 inches wide. So, you must Resample the image to match the size of the photo you want to use it with. Both the Resolution and the width must match.

The best photos for this effect are ones that already have some personality going on – personality that will be enhanced by the texture.

I took this Sun Face photo in Indiana back in 2010. The lighting was not ideal but I like the color and the concept of a “sun” in shade, and the crescent moon shape of the shadow spoke to me as well.

This photo is approximately 8 inches wide so I sized the Paper Texture image to match.

The next step is to drag one file into the other.

(If you do not know how to drag images into each other or to deal with Layers, you need my Photoshop Elements Kindergarten Workshop).

When you drag one file into the other, it will come in on a Layer of its own – above the original.

So, there are a couple of choices to make that will yield different results.

I first dragged the Paper Texture to the Sun Face file. I selected the Paper Texture Layer and changed the Normal Mode to Multiply. This results in only the parts of the Paper Texture that are darker than the photo to show.

I really liked what happened here. You can fine-tune the effect with the Opacity Slider for the Paper Texture Layer.  I used Save As to save this image without affecting my two original files.

Then, for a different look, I opened my original photo again and dragged it over to the Paper Texture file (which was still open). This time the photo is on top of the texture.

I played with the Opacity Slider for the photo Layer to allow some of the texture to show through (about 70% Opacity for the photo in this case). This creates a much softer and muted version . . .

And, it’s a little too muted for me, so I used the Unsharp Mask Filter at 165 (Radius of 2.3) to create this version which I like a lot better.

 

Here is a comparison of the original and the two textured versions, so you can see the very different reults of the two methods . . .

With the variety of Textures provided by Tuesday Total Textures, and all the images in your own stash, it could be awhile before you run out of interesting art images!! You can create your own textures by taking photos or scanning things too.

A Gift for You . . .

Recent versions of Photoshop and Elements have maddening workspaces which lock your photos up in a framework of clutter – making it VERY difficult to work with more than one file open and see what you are doing. I can’t stand it, so I put together a little PDF on how to slap that workspace into shape. You can always put it back the way it was, but I don’t think you will want to.

http://cre8it.com/workspace.pdf

Hang on to this PDF. Next time I will show you how to read PDF files as iBooks on your iPad and maybe your Kindle or Kindle App (if my sources are correct, you can do that now. You could not do it before, so that would be a happy addition).

Have fun!

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