08 photo art blends manual
By Linda Sattgast
Photo Art Blends | Lesson 8 Lesson 8: Using Textures Texture plays a large part in enhancing depth, dimension, and color to your photographs. We’ve provided a large selection of custom textures that contain bokeh, grunge, and scratches. They come in 3 different sizes so should work for virtually every project you are working on. Also, don’t be afraid to slightly change the proportion of the textures if you need to resize them, as it shouldn’t affect how they look once they’re blended. The lesson below shows you the fundamentals of working with textures and how to use them to make subtle changes in your images. Too much texture is distracting. Review our Blend Mode Basic lesson if you are a beginner in using this powerful function in digital art. • Open Adobe Photoshop Elements or Adobe Photoshop. • Select File > Open and select a photo from your system to add texture to. • Select File > Open. Browse your system for the class kit and select a Texture. Choose a 12x18 texture as that is the ratio of most photos, unless you think a different size would work better for your photo. • Click and drag the texture onto the photo using the move tool. Size and position texture as needed. • Set the blend mode of the texture to any blend mode you choose. Experiment to find the perfect blended look for your photo. Here we went with “Soft Light.” • If you find you want to add a little something more to the photo, select Layer > Duplicate Layer, click OK when the dialog box appears, and either leave the copy as is or set it to a different blend mode. We set the second layer of the texture to “Screen.” • Don’t forget to play around with the opacity of each layer as that will help you even more to achieve the look you want. For this example, the layer on “Soft Light” was set to 70% opacity, and the layer on “Screen” was set to 30% opacity. • Save in .psd format to retain layers and allow for future editing. • Save as high quality .jpg to upload to preferred print vendor for printing. See Printing Tips for print vendor suggestions and other printing advice.
Photo Art Blends © 2013 CottageArts.net, LLC, all rights reserved.
Here’s another sample of a textured image, along with the Layers Panel.
Our textures are colored so play around with changing their hue, too, for unlimited possibilities. Another idea is to have the photo be on top of the texture, applying the blend mode to the photo. See how this varies the end result. Also, you may want to erase texture over skin tones using a low opacity brush. And, like all of the products in the class kit, the textures are awesome in your digital scrapbooking art. Here two are used as subtle backgrounds.
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Photo Art Blends © 2013 CottageArts.net, LLC, all rights reserved.
Photo Art Blends | Lesson 8 Lesson 8: Using Textures Texture plays a large part in enhancing depth, dimension, and color to your photographs. We’ve provided a large selection of custom textures that contain bokeh, grunge, and scratches. They come in 3 different sizes so should work for virtually every project you are working on. Also, don’t be afraid to slightly change the proportion of the textures if you need to resize them, as it shouldn’t affect how they look once they’re blended. The lesson below shows you the fundamentals of working with textures and how to use them to make subtle changes in your images. Too much texture is distracting. Review our Blend Mode Basic lesson if you are a beginner in using this powerful function in digital art. • Open Adobe Photoshop Elements or Adobe Photoshop. • Select File > Open and select a photo from your system to add texture to. • Select File > Open. Browse your system for the class kit and select a Texture. Choose a 12x18 texture as that is the ratio of most photos, unless you think a different size would work better for your photo. • Click and drag the texture onto the photo using the move tool. Size and position texture as needed. • Set the blend mode of the texture to any blend mode you choose. Experiment to find the perfect blended look for your photo. Here we went with “Soft Light.” • If you find you want to add a little something more to the photo, select Layer > Duplicate Layer, click OK when the dialog box appears, and either leave the copy as is or set it to a different blend mode. We set the second layer of the texture to “Screen.” • Don’t forget to play around with the opacity of each layer as that will help you even more to achieve the look you want. For this example, the layer on “Soft Light” was set to 70% opacity, and the layer on “Screen” was set to 30% opacity. • Save in .psd format to retain layers and allow for future editing. • Save as high quality .jpg to upload to preferred print vendor for printing. See Printing Tips for print vendor suggestions and other printing advice.
Photo Art Blends © 2013 CottageArts.net, LLC, all rights reserved.
Here’s another sample of a textured image, along with the Layers Panel.
Our textures are colored so play around with changing their hue, too, for unlimited possibilities. Another idea is to have the photo be on top of the texture, applying the blend mode to the photo. See how this varies the end result. Also, you may want to erase texture over skin tones using a low opacity brush. And, like all of the products in the class kit, the textures are awesome in your digital scrapbooking art. Here two are used as subtle backgrounds.
Page 2
Photo Art Blends © 2013 CottageArts.net, LLC, all rights reserved.
