Photoshop

One of my most favorite photo processing techniques is using texture.  I love, love, love texture on photographs – subtle texture, dramatic collage-y texture … I just love it all! I have been asked several times how to use texture on pictures, so I thought I’d put together a little tutorial for you all.

The basic process for applying texture to your photograph is pretty simple:  open two pictures – one of a photo you want to add texture to, and one of a texture.  You then layer the texture on top of the main photograph, play with blending modes and opacity until you get something you like, and you’re done.  Easy deal.  But below I’ll show more detail in how this goes … I definitely like the visuals when I want to learn something new!

The first step is to open a photo that you’d like to add texture to … as well as a texture photo.  I’ve opened one of my sunflower photos below, as well as a texture that I made previously.  (You can use anything for texture – pictures of wall, the sidewalk, scans of old wallpaper or books … use your imagination.  You can also find lots of free textures on the internet – I will give you a link to some other texture resources below.)

Here is my sunflower, which I plan to add texture to:

Here is my texture:

Next, in order to apply the texture photo over the top of the sunflower, I hit command+A on my mac to select the entire texture picture (ctrl+A on a PC).  Copy (command+C) and move to the sunflower picture.  Paste the texture (command+V) onto the sunflower, so that the texture is in a layer over the top of the sunflower.  You’ll get something that looks similar to this:

Now, in this case my texture image was a bit larger than my sunflower.  I’ll just hit command+T to get the little handles that allow me to adjust the size of my texture, and get it lined up roughly with the sunflower:

Hit enter, and now I am ready to start playing.  Adjust the blending mode on the texture layer … modes I use often are overlay or soft light – but experiment with all of them and see what you get.

You can also adjust the opacity of the layer to make the texture more subtle or more dramatic.  It’s all up to you!  For my sunflower picture, I ended up with the texture on blending mode soft light, with an opacity of 79%.  I also used a layer mask to lighten the texture even more over the top of the flower and the bee.

So, here is the before and after, together – it’s pretty subtle right?

Here’s another one I did tonight, much more dramatic.  For this one I used a scan of some vintage sheet music, a scan of a vintage book cover, and a scan of an old, handwritten letter.

You can see all the layers that I ended up with on this one here:

So, after you get the basics down, there are tons of different ways you can apply texture layers to your photographs.  Layer many textures on top of one another, change the colors, use layer masks, play with different blending modes and opacities.

Here are some great resources for more information and free textures to use:

1.  First – the texture that I used in my sunflower picture is your to keep and play with if you’d like. Click Here to Download.

2.  Another great texture tutorial can be found at Pioneer Woman here.

3.  MCP Actions blog has a huge list of free textures from around the web here.

4.  And lastly – this has nothing to do with creating your own textured photographs – but I liked my pink flowers collage so much that I added it to my shop.  I titled it Love Song, you can find it here.

Ask any questions or share your textured photos in the comments!

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