In today s tutorial you will learn the basics of using fine art textures in your photography work.

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Buddy Kerry Rich
5 years ago
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1 Applying Fine Art Textures to Your Photography Work WHAT WE RE CREATING: In today s tutorial you will learn the basics of using fine art textures in your photography work. If you re wondering exactly what a fine art texture is, then it is essentially a flat image file (usually a.jpg), which can be used as an overlay to your photographic or design work. For example, if you were looking to make a photo look worn and aged, then you could overlay a worn/aged texture file, and achieve the desired look in seconds. Using textures in your photography work certainly isn t vital, but when done right, can add a lovely grungy feel to your work. Ok, are you ready to explore the world of texture design? In today s lesson, I ll be showing you how some basic texture application can transform a regular photograph into a lovely vintage outcome:

2 Step 1:

3 Start by downloading this lovely shot of a flower. Open up the image within Photoshop, and prepare to add to your textures. Of course we encourage you to try these techniques on your own photography work, but for the purposes of this tutorial, this is a great starting image. Step 2: Throughout this tutorial we ll be working with the fine art textures from 2 Lil Owls, which are widely considered to be the best textures in the world. We re currently offering 310 all new 2 Lil Owls textures at a 93% launch special discount. Be sure to check out the deal before it expires in just a few days though. If you re wondering what makes a good texture, then it generally falls into a few categories: Looking incredibly sharp, even at high resolutions (much as good photography should). Looking generally beautiful and artistic. The best textures often can stand alone as works of art. Plenty of lovely details and visual flourishes. These really add a lot to your work when used as an overlay. Denise, the owner at 2 Lil Owls has mastered the art of texture creation, and often will combine up to 50 surfaces to create her wonderful texture designs. She ll travel all over photographing interesting surfaces, such as abandoned warehouses and rusty train stations. The results are breath-taking!

4 Start by pasting in the texture Ancient Times 2, taken from our current massive texture deal, positioning it to fill your canvas like so. This texture will automatically be pasted onto a new layer in Photoshop. In your Photoshop layer palette, you ll see some options for this new layer. Change the layer blend mode from normal to overlay, and reduce the opacity from 100% to 60%.

5 This creates a lovely overlay effect, where the original photo shows through clearly, but many of the details and colour tints from the texture are combined with it: Step 3: Now paste in a new texture Burnished 3, and resize it to fit your canvas perfectly:

6 Change this new texture layer s blend mode from normal to overlay too, and reduce it s opacity to 20%. Again, this just applies an extra layer of detail and colour tinting for this image:

7 Step 4: As you can see by now, texturing work can be very simple, but easily let you create beautiful results. Typically you can experiment with layering up multiple textures, and with each texture see which layer blend mode and overlay setting produces the best results. It s really about having fun, and using trial and error to achieve a beautiful result. The great thing about textures is that your original photo will generally just contain one layer. By layering multiple textures you re essentially adding dozens, if not hundreds of surfaces over your original photo, but doing it in a way that lets the detail of the original photo show through clearly, all while adding the detail of these overlays to your end composition. Now, we re going to paste in another texture Cosmos 14 onto a new layer. Change this layer s blend mode to overlay and reduce it s opacity to 40%:

8 Step 5: As you can see by now, overlay is my favourite Photoshop blend mode, although of course there are many others that work well, including soft light, hard light, screen, multiply and more! Next, we re going to paste in Heirloom 1 as a new layer, again, resizing it to fit out canvas:

9 Change this layer s blend mode to overlay (you guessed it!) and reduce it s opacity to 25%.

10 Again, remember that texturing is about not going over the top. You don t want your image to appear totally fake and overdone, so it s a good idea to generally scale back the opacities of your textures to something more subtle, and then build them up over time. Step 6: Paste in Fire Cracker 5. The cool tones of this texture should compliment our photo well. Change this texture layer s blend mode to soft light and reduce it s opacity to 40%.

11 Step 7: Paste in this Forgotten 2 texture, fitting it nicely to your canvas.

12 Change this layer s blend mode to hard light and reduce it s opacity to 25%.

13 Step 8: Now drop in the final texture, Frenzy 2 : Change this layer s blend mode to soft light and drop the opacity to 25%.

14 Step 9: Select all of the layers in your layers palette, including your original photo background layer. Once all of the layers are selected, right click on any one of them, and select duplicate layers.

They will all be selected automatically, so right click on them and select

15 Once you ve clicked to duplicate layers you ll see all of your duplicated layers copied above the original layers. They will all be selected automatically, so right click on them and select merge layers. This will merge these duplicate layers into a single layer. Rename this layer sharpen : Step 10:

16 With your sharpen layer selected, go to the filter menu, and then other > high pass. Select a radius of 1.0 pixels. Your image will go a strange shade of grey, but not to worry, this all part of the process! You ll see some of the finer details and edges of your photo showing through. This high-pass technique is used to give you lots of sharpening control over your images. Now, set this layer s blend mode to overlay. This will hide all of the neutral grey colour, and only let the sharper edges show through. This gives your photo a subtle, but effective sharpen. We do this, as applying textures will lose a little of the sharpness of your original photo. This is a great way to bring back that crisp look.

17 Step 11: Finally, we want to add a vignette effect, in order to frame our photo, as draw attention towards the centre. Create a new layer called vignette, and fill your canvas with any colour (I chose red):

18 Now right click on this layer within your layer s palette and choose blending options. Within this menu select inner glow. Apply the settings shown below, to apply a nice black inner glow:

19 Here s the result of this glow, against our red background:

20 Now, with this vignette layer selected, reduce the layer fill opacity to 0%. You ll see that the main layer opacity is kept at 100%, but the fill opacity, directly beneath it is reduced to 0%. The effect of this is that the red fill is hidden, but the black inner glow is still visible:

21 Now, reduce the main layer opacity from 100% to 10%. This will make your inner glow vignette much more subtle. However, it does help to draw the eye into the centre of your piece, and give more precedence to the subject. AND WE RE DONE And here s our final textured design: I really hope that this tutorial opened your eyes to some of the potential of fine art textures for your photography work.

This isn t as intimidating as it sounds, and I ll walk you through the basic steps needed to achieve multiple texture application.

This isn t as intimidating as it sounds, and I ll walk you through the basic steps needed to achieve multiple texture application. Apply Your Textures to Multiple Photos Using Photoshop Actions WHAT WE RE CREATING: We re all agreed that textures can add depth and beauty to our photography and design work. However, what if you want