Adding Texture Overlays in Photoshop
Adding a texture overlay layer in Photoshop is a very
simple procedure and it can create some very fun and interesting
effects, ranging from making a photograph look like an oil painting to giving a scenic shot a vintage-postcard look. If you do any kind of graphic arts work or design brochures or
newsletters, using texture overlays can be a nice way to customize an
otherwise ordinary shot--giving it a much more graphic appeal or matching photos to the textures and look of your design pieces.
Basically
you only need two things to create the effect: a photo that you want to
add a texture too and a texture layer. You can either create your own
textures by photographing interesting textures (a piece of canvas or
fabric, a close-up of barn siding, a rusted old metal sign surface,
etc.) or you can buy them. I bought the texture show here from the FloraBella Collection--they're
inexpensive and beautifully done (and you get them in 300 dpi, so if
you need to reproduce or print your photos, you'll have all the
resolution you need). The set of textures that I bought had three
different versions (cold, warm, B&W) of 25 different
textures--so 75 textures in all at full resolution for $40. A steal if
you ask me. But again, you can easily create your own and that's a fun
learning experience. If you are shooting your own textures, try to use
side lighting because that will bring up the three dimensionality or "nap" of the textured surface. You can, of course, adjust the color saturation, sharpness, hue, of the coolness or warmth of your textures in Photoshop and save a variety of different versions of the same texture. One texture goes a long way if you're creative about how you use it.
To combine your photo
and the texture simply open your photo and the texture (separately) in
Photoshop (or another editing program) and then use the move tool to
drag the texture onto the photo image. Then use the opacity slider (top
right of the layers palette) to adjust the density of the texture until
you get the level of texture that you want. In the shot above I used an
opacity of 29%. You can then also play with layer-blending modes to
further enhance the blend (though as I recall I just used the "normal"
blending mode for this shot). I did crop the image a tad after combining
the two layers. Another possibility is to add a Gaussian blur to the texture overlay to soften details a bit.
If you look at the three images above
you'll see the before and after of the lighthouse photo and the shot of just
the texture. One thing you have to be sure of is that you have both your
original photo and the texture set to the same resolution and color
space. Color space usually isn't that big an issue since and I just
override the texture's color space to match it with the photo (you'll
get a warning screen automatically that will do this for you). If the
texture happens to be larger than the photo, you can move it around
(again, using the move tool) until it "sits" on the photo where you want
it. When you have the image you want, flatten it in that position (or
lock the two layers) so that you don't move it around accidentally.
Creating
the right positioning and opacity is really a very visual and
instinctive thing and it's a lot of fun to play with the various
blending modes. The thing I like about the final image here is that it
gives the lighthouse photo a kind of "found" old postcard look--like the
kind of image you might find while going through a bin of old snapshots
at a yard sale.
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