Transcripts
1. Intro to art of using textures:
2. How to add a texture to your photograph: Hey, this is Denise from
2 Lil' Owls Studio. In this video, I want to show you how to add textures
to your photographs. What I have open here is
an example of a texture. It's a JPEG file. These are some
textures I've created, but you can use all kinds
of things as a texture, such as things you've gone
out and photographed, old papers, or things you've painted that maybe you've
scanned into your computer. Basically, it's another JPEG file similar to the photograph
file that you're using. We're going to add
this file right on top of our photograph and create a top layer that we then
change the blending modes on so that we then incorporate that texture into
our photograph. Why would you want to do that? To me, it makes your photo
a little more art-like, a little more like
a mixed media piece that you're doing digitally. Then you might want to
print out and hang or maybe you're going to sell
it at an art gallery, is one more dimension
that you can add to your photo because you
want to, it's that simple. It's just wanting to go a little further and explore
and experiment and just see what you
can get rather than being a traditional
straight-out-of-camera photographer. I like that. I like
pushing the boundaries. So I have a collection open
here, the Ancient times. You can just randomly pick and
play and see what you get. One way to add a texture to your photo is to have
your photo already open. You can open the texture
file that you want to use and then you
simply select it. Make sure you've got your
little selector tool up here selected. You would simply select it and drag it right onto your photo. Then it places and
it's ready to size. So we're just going to
grab our handlebars and pull that out to the
size of the photo, and then we change
our blending mode. You have a lot of choices
here on the blending modes. You have the top five here
that are darkening modes, the next five are
lightening modes, the next five to me are
more like blending modes, and then you have some
[inaudible] modes here at the bottom that I don't generally
use myself on these. Soft Light is probably
my first go-to mode because it's a very
soft blending mode. Overlay, a little bit stronger. Hard Light, even stronger. If you're in the
lightning modes, the Screen mode is
the most popular. This is really nice for adding a great haze to your photo. Generally, you wouldn't
use it at 100 percent, you would come down and
use it at a lower opacity. So that's a good mode. Then Multiply is the most
popular darkening mode. You can use it at any opacity that ends up working
for your photo. But again, I usually start with the Soft Light and
I go from there. So see how great that looks. Another way to add texture to your photograph is go up here to your File menu and
go File and Place. Then you will navigate to where you have your
texture file stored. So I'm going to
randomly just pick a different file that we just did so that you can see what
a different one looks like. So you just highlight it
and hit the "Place" button, and then that appears right on your photograph ready to size. Once you get it sized out, then pick your blending mode. See, that's great. I love those. Ancient times are some
of my favorite ones. So that's how your two easy
ways to place a texture. You can drag it right
onto the photograph, or you can go to File and Place. Another thing we
could have done is we could have had a
file already open. I'll just randomly pick another one and
just have it open. We could have just
had our picker ready, click down, and drag it
right into our file also. Then you'll notice
it's actually more the same size as my
photo here because it was a full-size open product already rather than
a smart product that we were dragging in. So you just drag it, size it to your photo again, and then change
the blending mode. There you go. Now you have a third option of how to place a texture
on your photo. So I hope out of
those three ways, you find a way that
your favorite. In the following videos, I'm going to show you some
great things that you can do to manipulate
that texture to incorporate it even more into your photograph and make it
look the best it can look. So thanks and I'll see
you in the next video.
3. How to pick a texture to use: In this video, I want
to talk a little bit about how you pick a texture and what kind of photograph really works
best with textures. So this is my own
personal opinion so I'm sure there's a million different
ways out there and everybody has their own system, but what I do when
I'm going to place textures is I start
off with, first of all, a great photograph. I go ahead and pick the very best photograph I can right out of camera
to start with. The reason I do that
is because I'm trying to enhance a
beautiful photograph. I'm not trying to compete
with the textures. I'm trying to get that
texture to blend in and enhance my original vision. I also don't have a lot of business going
on in the photograph, like you couldn't have a million things going on
in this photograph and then add a texture to it
and the texture be successful because everything is competing with each other. So when I'm out taking
photographs, I'm usually shooting wide-open
on my aperture, maybe something four
or three or two so that I'm getting a
very pretty clear subject and a lot of blur. Blur loves textures. [LAUGHTER] So I look for a
whole lot of blur, a little bit of clear subject, and then I know I've
got a good start. Say, for instance, if
we're looking at this one, we started off with a very
pretty clear subject, and then a lot of
blur on the sides. You don't want a photograph to be competing
with the texture, you want it to be
enhanced by the texture. That's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a lot of
blur in my background and a very pretty subject
in my foreground. Then how do I pick a texture? I pick a set that I'm
interested in working in, and then I might pick a
texture with similar tones or a tone I'm
trying to pull out, like if it's warmth, maybe I'll pick a brown or yellow and pull
some warmth out. So I'll pick something
that's already complimenting what I have going on in the
photograph and start there. Doesn't always work, but it
does give me a starting point. Like look at this texture. It's got some very pretty
tones going on in there. If we pull it to the
side, you can see I've got some of these tones a little bit in the photograph. If I put that on there and
change the blending mode, hopefully, that has enhanced what I've had in the photograph, like that. That's
really beautiful. Of course, if I didn't like the color casting, I can
then go over here to Adjustments and pull
the saturation of that color down to match what
I need it for that photo. So that's my philosophy. I'm just getting into
a set and I'm like, I'm going to try this set
and just see what I get, and maybe I like it
and maybe I don't. Or I'm going to try
Askew and maybe I'll look around this
set of textures and see maybe I like
this color in here. That's really pretty.
You take off this one. Try to move the photo
instead of the texture. Then if you get it on
here and you need to resize it and you
forget how to do that, just hit your Command on
a Mac or your Control key on a PC and the T. That will let you get
your handlebars back to resize this. Soft Light. So that's pretty. That's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a lot of blur in my photos so that
it's not too busy. I'm looking for textures that complement what I already have going on in there so that when I change the blend mode
on that texture layer, it's probably going to look
good almost every time. Then two, there's a lot of reasons why you might
pick specialty sets. Say, Beautiful Bokeh. Maybe in the background, I want
some pretty bokeh bubbles. Let's just see what
that gives us. So that's fun. Then of course if we
put a mask on that, pull that back over where
I can see my brushes. We could take that
all off her face. Maybe blend it a little bit there in the sides,
and then look at those pretty bokeh
bubbles we just threw in back there, that is fantastic. So that's another reason why you might dive into
particular textures. Maybe you're trying to add
a feature that was missing, like some pretty bokeh
back in the background. So definitely experiment. Placing textures and picking
the right textures is all trial and error,
but you'll be more successful if you start
off with the right type of photograph to begin with
and then go from there. I'll see you in the next video.
4. What you can use as a texture: In this video, let's talk for a few minutes about
what a texture is. A texture can be just about anything
that you want it to be. You can go out and
photograph textures, you can use old, vintage
resources as textures, you can make your own
textures in Photoshop. Basically, what I do when I make textures is I start off with something that
I've photographed. My favorite place to
photograph things are old car junkyards because
cars have that wonderful, weathered, rusty, scratched paint from sitting out in the weather all the time. I also like old train yards. If you can safely,
and with permission, get into an abandoned house, I like shooting moldy
walls that occur in abandoned houses
where maybe it's been raining and the roof's
leaking and things like that. So I like abandoned spaces. You can just get
up close to, say, a brick wall or an old building and see what textures you
can find on the walls. Like for instance,
this was taken at the train yard and I might use the whole thing or I
might use part of it. This here was taken
in an abandoned house and this is a fabulous
texture to have. I love all of this mold and scratches
that are going on in this texture and it works fantastic when you mix
this with other photos. This is an up-close of a plaster wall in an abandoned house that has been molding and
started to crack. That was a fantastic surface. You can move around
the wall too and take close-up shots every
couple of inches in old spaces and wind up with a different texture if
you hit the right wall, you just have to be creative. Another wall photo, and then antique papers are a
favorite go-to source of mine. I have age spots and
water spots and folds and crinkles and things that you just can't combine naturally
when we age in nature, you can make some
of these organic, wonderful things
for your textures. Then you can paint your stuff. This is a painted
piece that I did with some distressed stains paint and then sprinkled
it with water. These are some of my favorite
textures to play with. I like old book
covers because I make altered art book where
I cut the covers off, so I don't throw
the covers away, they become part
of another piece of art or they get
scanned in and used as a texture in my photographs. So those are wonderful
book covers. Watercolor paint makes
fantastic textures because they're usually
on watercolor paper, so that has a nice texture. Then however you've
painted and let the paint dry at different stages of the piece that
you're working on, like all of these yummy
edges right through here, wonderful for textures. Then of course, you
can buy textures. There's plenty of commercial textures out there
that you can get. I have over 200 sets on
the 2 Lil' Owls site, and my textures have
tons of layers in it. This is not just
something I photograph, this is something I
have probably 20 layers in and where I've layered
other photos in there. Maybe I have a few color
layers changing the color. Maybe I have some old
film work done there, adding some great borders. Like this one has an
old film worked in for all these yummy
borders here. So definitely look around. This is a real piece of old
film that I've scanned in. Those are some of my favorite. If you've got some old
film or negatives, scan them in real big, and clone the person out
of the picture here, and then you have the most wonderful textures
coming from the old films. Those are probably by far
my absolute favorite. They're the most versatile. They go on just about
anything and they make great layers in textures you might consider
making for yourself. I hope that gives you
a good idea of what a texture is and where you might look for different things to consider using in
your photographs. I'll see you in the
next video. Thanks.
5. How to add multiple texture layers: In this video, I want to
show you and encourage you on how you can use more than one texture
in your photograph. I have one of my
photos opened and I can go to File, Place. I'm going to pick just
a random texture here, place that right on my photo. I'm going to fix my blending
mode to soft light, and then you'll notice
there that we've got one texture here
on our photograph. I'm going to add a mask
and we'll just paint that texture off
her face for this since it's a neutral color, then it still blends, maybe
a little off the hair there. Now, what I want you
to note is that you can add another texture layer
here if you would like. One way to do that is we could duplicate
the current layer, and then you have two
of the same texture. You can use them on
different blending modes and different opacities. So that's one method. Another method is to go
to File, Place and pick an entirely different texture to layer on top of the one that
we've already got there, so I'm going to go to Place. I'm in the black screen
textures, which are super cool, so that's why I want to show
you these very quickly. These are black textures with slight white details on them, and when you pick
one of these I'm just going to place one. I'm going to rotate
that and then size it. When we use these textures and we use them on the
screen blend mode, it makes all of the black
disappear and leaves the little tiny bit of white
details still showing. I love these textures and
we can do the same thing: we can add a mask, pick a brush, swipe it off our
face of our subject, and then we can leave some
of those details showing in the areas around our photograph. Those are fun to play with. I like the difference
that can make. You might pull it a little
off her hair here even. Your work in these till you
get something that you like. Don't be afraid to
use two or three, or even four textures on the same photograph to really pump up the interests
that you're adding. I'm going to place
one more just to see what we get just to be fun. I'm in the Askew set and
this might not look good and it might look good, so we'll just test it
out and see what we get. I'm just going to
place a random one. I love the big frames
that this set has on it. Again, you just change the blend mode and add
some nice depth in there. We can again add a mask. You can copy the mask that's on a different
layer if you want. Let me show you how to do that. If you're on a Mac or
a PC, you want to hit your Alt/Option key, and then you can just click
right on that mask, drag it up to the
layer right above it, and that will copy that
mask to that layer for you. Did you see how I do that?
Let me just undo that. I'm clicking my "Alt/Option" key and just dragging it right up, and then it places that mask right on the
next layer for us. That's a super easy way to copy the mask from
layer to layer if you don't want to redo it every single time you
add a texture up there. I hope that by
seeing that, you'll add multiple textures
or multiple lines onto your photos and just
experiment and see what great looks you can get by having more than one
texture on there. I will see you in
the next video.
6. Manipulating your texture layer: In this video, I
want to show you a couple of things
that you can do that will manipulate our
texture a little further. Sometimes when you place
the texture on top, it doesn't blend as
well as you would want. Then of course, you
can try to change the opacity to get that to
look how you'd like it. But there's some other more advanced things
that we might do to that texture layer that would incorporate it even
better for us. Once you have your layer on there and you have the
blend mode that you like and an opacity you think
you're happy with, make sure the layer
is still highlighted, and then we can go
up to Image and Adjustments and we can further make adjustments to
the texture layer. This will be separated completely than the
photograph layer. We're not changing the photograph
layer when we do this. Some of the things I
like to do is change the levels, perhaps the curves. If you're working in elements, you won't have the
Curves option, but curves, if
you're in Photoshop, sometimes I definitely
change the Hue/Saturation. If I have a very
colorful texture and I like the texture part
but not the color part, then I will desaturate
that texture. Let's just pick that
and you can pull that color out right
thereby pulling the saturation down
to negative 100. Then you'll notice on this one that it just
made it more gray. If we hit "Cancel", you can see it warmed
up a little bit, that texture has a tiny
bit of color to it. But if we go back to the Hue/Saturation
and we pull that out, we've pulled all the
color out completely and simply left the texture part. That's one thing
that I love to do. I love to change the saturation. Another thing I'll do
is I'll get in here to the levels and you'll notice on the texture layer with
the levels that I'm missing most of the dark darks
and the light lights. In this case, you
could pull those in and you'll see what
that gave us there. If I turn that off and on, it gave that texture a little
more of an [inaudible] . That made a little
more exciting. I'm going to leave
it like that because I actually like that. Then of course, if you
move this center one, you will adjust the mid-tones. These are the darks,
and these are lights. Hit "Okay". Another thing that I like to
do is playing the curves, which is very similar
to the levels, and you might give it a pop
with a slight S curve there. If I turn that off and on, you can see how that gave
it a nice little pop in there, giving it a curve. At that point, you
might think, gosh, maybe I've overdone
it a little bit, and you can back
off your opacity. That's a few very easy exciting
things that you can do to the texture layer to
really pump it up and make it work best it
can in your photograph. All right, I'll see
you in the next video.
7. Using a layer mask: In this video, we're going
to talk about how to add a mask to your textures. What a mask in Photoshop is, is simply a way to hide or
reveal certain areas of the photograph from the layer that you've got covering
the bottom layer. What that means is when I put a texture on here and I change the blending mode and I have the texture over
the entire face, maybe I don't want the
texture to be on her skin, so I will hide the texture
part from her skin. A mask allows me to do that. Let me show you what I mean. We're going to go to File, Place and we're going
to go ahead and place a texture on
her photograph. I'm in the Awry collection here, so I'm just going to select a random texture and then
hit the "Place" button. We can resize that right out to the size of our photograph. We'll change the blending mode
so it becomes transparent. Perfect. Then you'll notice
we don't want this grid on her face and there's a couple of different ways to take
that off of her face. I'll show you another method in one of the other
videos coming up. But for this method, we're
going to add a mask. While you've got this
layer highlighted, you want to come
right down here to this menu where you have the FX, the little square
with the circle, that two little halftone circle, and you want to select the
box with the circle in it. That puts a white box
right here onto our layer. That's called a layer mask. What we're going to do
because it's white, we're going to use a
soft round paintbrush. Pick your paintbrush tool, pick a soft round brush
to paint that with. Then we paint on a white mask. We see it's highlighted
because we've got the little squares right
around our little box there. We paint on that with
the black paint. The black paint hides what we've got going
on with that texture. If we were to use white paint, it would then re-reveal. For instance, if I were to
paint here with the black and I did too much, I could simply change my colors over here from black to white, and I could paint
it right back on. You can see on the
little white box here, what exactly I have painted
as I'm painting it, and then paint off, paint on until you get
it how you want it. Black reveals and
white conceals. Another thing that I consider
when I'm using a mask is, I don't usually use it
at 100 percent opacity. I usually start at
a lower opacity, maybe 30-40 percent, so that I can remove texture in layers instead
of all at one time. Then if you're clicking
on here and you're not seeing any
texture get removed, make sure that your color is on the correct white or black mode. Then you can remove the texture just from
the areas that you want. You can get it as
close as you want. You can make the brush larger or smaller with your bracket keys, left key goes smaller, right key goes larger. Then that's how we
can very easily remove the texture
from our subject. The only drawback
to that is we are completely removing that
texture from our file. If, for instance, we had a texture that had
a color to it, let me just pick one that has a color that might show up, if we have something that's got a definite color rather
than mostly gray, change that blending tone, you can tell that it changed the color of our entire picture. If we put a mask on
that and then we remove just the
part of the face, then you'll notice that part of your picture maybe a different
color than the other part because we've erased the
texture here and we haven't maintained the color all the
way across our photograph. That's something to be aware of when you're using
a mask like that. Are you changing the color so that it no longer
blends and looks like it's natural or is what
you've done look okay? Because like with this one, even though I've
changed it peachy, her skin is peachy and
it actually works. Totally depends on the texture
file that you're using, if this method is going to
work great for you or not. That is using a layer mask. What subjects do you
brush the texture off of? Sometimes I'll brush it
off of my flower petals. I'll definitely brush
it off of skin. If I have a person in the photo, it's up to you as to what you might want to
see that texture on. Maybe if I have a boat here, I might take some off the
boat if I don't like how grungy it makes it,
total preference. That is using a layer mask.
8. Remove texture retain tone: In this video, I'm going
to show you how we can remove the texture from
our subject and still retain the tone that we've
got going in our photograph. Because you remember
in the last video where we used the mask, we erased the tone when
we erased the texture. In this video, I'm
going to show you how we can keep that tone. I'm going to start
off by placing our texture and maybe I'll place this peachy one again just because it had a pretty
color tone to it. Hit "Place". We'll go ahead and
size that out, and go ahead and pick
a blending mode, and then you'll see
we've got it all over our subject's face there. Like before, I'm going to
go ahead and add a mask. Using the little dark box
with the white circle, I'm going to pick a soft round brush, and while I'm on black so that I'm
removing and concealing, I'm going to brush
it off her face. Then here's where we're
going to do something different than we just did. I'm going to actually
highlight this layer, drag it down to the
little page icon beside the trash can, and duplicate the layer. Now, I have two layers and I want to
pick the bottom layer, and while the mask
box is selected, hit "Command" if you're on a Mac and "Control"
if you're on a PC. Hit the "Command"
button and the letter "I" and you'll notice that we have reversed that mask in that box and
we've made it black. Now, this part is
revealing the face, and on the one above it, it's revealing everything
around the face. On the bottom one where we've
got the face highlighted, we've got texture on
there because you see I can turn that texture on
and off, just the face. We don't want that texture
to stay on the face, but I want that color to stay. While I have not the
mask box selected, but the texture box selected, I'm going to apply a blur
to this entire layer by going up here to the
Filter, Blur, Gaussian Blur. Now, did you just see that? That totally just removed all that texture
but left the color. Now you can pick a blur
level that you want. If we have it at 0, you see we leave
the texture there. If we bring it up to 13, 15, 400, [LAUGHTER] you are adding different levels of blur to
that entire texture layer. You can see over here, it just smooths
it out but leaves the color and you
can hit "Okay". Now what you've done is you have removed the texture
from the face, but you've retained the tone across the entire composition. There you have it.
The very easiest way to remove the texture
and retain the tone. I'll see you in the next video.
9. Remove texture retain tone paint on: In this video, I want to
show you one more method for removing the texture
but retaining the tone. It's a little different
than the method where we added two layers and added
blur to one of the layers. This one, we're
actually going to paint directly on the texture. This is a more
destructive method of removing your texture since we're actually going to be painting on our texture layer. But it does have
its place and it is a method that I
like to use myself. So I want to show you and
then you have choices. So I've got the same file open, I'm just going to go ahead and place a texture,
File, Place. I'm just going to pick a random
one out of this Askew set. Then once you've
got it sized out, be sure to hit your "Enter"
button to get it placed, and then change
your blending mode. Now you can see that
with this texture, we've got all these scratches on the texture showing
up on her face, and I don't really
want it to do that. If you will hit your
"Command" key at the same time that you're hitting this background
layer eyeball, it will reveal the texture
to you so that we can pick a color out of it,
and we want to pick a color from about this area. So hold your "Command",
and on your PC, this is the Control key, just turn the eyeball to
the background layer off, and then come over here to your color selectors so that we can pick a color
right out of here. I think the face was
right about there, it's a neutrally brown,
and then hit "Okay". Now we have brown here, and we're going to pick
up paintbrush, and again, this is a soft round brush. The reason why you
use a soft brush rather than a hard
brush is because we don't want a hard edge
where we stop painting. It will be very obvious. Once you've got a color
and you've got a brush, hold that "Command",
"Control" key down again, just turn the eyeball
back onto the background, and now make sure that
you're on the texture layer, and that little texture
is selected with those little boxes
around the box, and then we're ready to paint. Put this Opacity down on
something low because, this is something
where you could definitely overdo
it the first time, and if you've forgot and
saved it or whatever, you cannot go back and fix that, you'd have to delete the
texture and try again. So low opacity, change the size of
your brush with your left and right Bracket key, left key makes it smaller, right key makes it bigger, and then start painting
that color directly on your texture and on any
place where you don't want texture to be
showing on your subject. Then you can feather it in
since we're at a low opacity, we might just feather
it in around her face so that the
transition is gradual instead of stark. There you go. Now, we've painted
directly on our texture and we've removed the texture from our subject but
retained the tone. That's, again, just
another method for you to try and just see what pictures that
works better for you than the other methods or it may be easier to remember
what have you. I hope you like that method and I'll see you in the next video.
10. How to replace a dull sky: I'm going to show
you in this video how easy is to replace a
sky in your photograph. This is the sky that
we've got to start with. Before I put a sky
into this photograph, I'm going to very quickly
do a quick selection of our parts of our
girl that are up here in the sky and maybe
a little further down, and that will allow us to place the sky
easier in a moment. I'm going to select the "Quick
Selection Tool" over here. It's in there with
your Magic Wand, and with this brush at about
a size 40 or 50 or so, we want to be able to get
the small detail parts. I'm going to select
the girl here. Photoshop does a pretty good job at this quick selection, so usually I can get a
real good selection here. If you end up with a place
like right here in-between your arms that you don't
want to be selected, if you hit your Option
or your Alt key on a PC and it'll give you a little negative
inside your circle, then when you click on that, it will let you take that little part out
of our selection. Pick that little bit
of hair up there. Then what we're going to do, I don't really need
this hair here, but I'm going to pick it
just in case because really, we're placing a sky
right about up here. What I'm going to do now
is I'm going up here to the Refine Edge box
that it gives us. Then this is what it lets it do. What we're going to do is take our little picker and we're
going to very quickly just clean up the areas where maybe there's some sky showing
through her hair that we want to get rid
of, just like that. See how nice that does? So just clean up her
edges real quick. You get little details back in there like little
wispy pieces of hair. Do you see how that brought that little piece of hair back? This is a pretty cool tool. That looks pretty
good right there. I'm going to feather
it just a tiny bit and maybe add a tiny bit of contrast right here in our
box, and then hit ''Okay''. Now what we've got is an
area that is selected. If you just hit your
Command on a Mac or your Control key on
a PC and a letter J, Command-J, it will make a copy
right over here above our background that just has the girl that we just selected. That's exactly what we wanted. Then we're going to place our sky in-between
these two layers. I'm going to just go to File, Place, and I'm going to pick out the sky that I want to use in this photograph. I think I'm going
to use Dramatic Sky 11 because it's similar in tone and I like
what this part of the sky is doing in relation to what my
photograph is doing. Just experiment with these, they're really fun to play with. Then I'm going to
resize it right up here to the top of my photo where
I want the sky to lay. Another cool thing
that you can do while you're doing this is
if you wanted to, you could right-click on this while it's still in
free transform mode, and you can change
the perspective of the clouds if you want. A pulling just like
that while holding down your Command or
your Control key. That's pretty cool
because then you can really make those do some
fun things like that. We're going to go for that
and hit your ''Enter'' button and add a mask. We're going to turn the
opacity down a little bit. See right there? We
can always change it. We're going to
pick a black brush and add a medium opacity. We are going to get
rid of our line down here, and then very softly,
with the mountains back there, blend that sky right
up just like that. Then you can perfect that as you want working with the
different opacities and such, blending that right up. Look how beautiful that is. Then you can change the
opacity as you need it. That's really nice, right there. Then once you've done all that, you are ready to finish your processing so that your
whole photo is cohesive. Like on this one, I'm in the
beautiful spring actions. I might run this raindrops
and look what that did. It added a really pretty soft, warm morning glow to that photo. Now we can see
this is our after, so check it out. This is our before
and our after. You can see how adding a more dramatic sky where
maybe you didn't have one on the day you
were out shooting can really pump up the
drama in your photos. Thanks for watching and
I'll see you next time.
DENISE LOVE, Artist & Photographer
