January 20, 2010

Adventures in Textures, Part Tres....

I don't often use textures, much though I like them and their artsy effect. Textures take [me] time. Oodles of time. But since I'm avoiding laundry and dust and dinner I'm all cozied up in my dry home during this thunder/lightning/rain/tornado-watch (oh my!), I thought I would experiment a little.

Here's how I "play" with textures. I send my photo to Photoshop and open up several textures. I'll add layers for 3+ of the chosen textures and then play around with modes (usually overlay, soft light, and screen) and opacities and I'll liberally turn layers off and on and try them with different combos of textures layered on each other.

So, here's my test photo, sans texture:

November Sunrise at Mono Lake

I've layered 4 of Shana Rae's Florabella textures on it: Artiste, Moulin Rouge, Vintage Autumn, and Mai Tai (only Artiste is turned on below).

mono texture snipit

One of the surprising [to me] effects of textures is the warming/cooling/changing-color-tone ability of different textures. In the photo below I have Vintage Autumn clicked "on" at 100%. You can see how it warmed the photo and gave it an orange-ish glow.

mono texture 2 snipit

And here's how my final photo turned out. The recipe:
Vintage Autumn - soft light - 27% opacity (for subtle warming & slight vignette)
Mai Tai - soft light - 52% opacity (for slight light tweaking & texture)
Artiste - soft light - 92% opacity (for stronger texture)

_MG_7722 texture

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15 comments:

angie {the arthur clan} said...

GORGEOUS! I need to find some {me} time because I want to play with textures now. :)

Tracy P. said...

I like your housework style. You end up with such a beautiful finished product!

I wish I had a little more to show for my housework efforts.

Leslie said...

this is pure art.

Christal said...

Beautiful! Thanks for the ideas... and I agree with Tracy. I need to do your style of housework more often!
Where is this shot, by the way? It is gorgeous!

Holly said...

Lovely!

Anonymous said...

You are a brave, brave women with textures and smart about them too! You make me (almost) want to try...however I'm a little too nervous. I need to read up on some of the texture craze before I get my feet wet in it. It just seems so confusing! You've done a splendid job, though. Those pictures are beautiful!
I've heard about all of the rain and storms you guys have been having...sounds like a monsoon has hit! My grandparents in SJC are enjoying the 'midwestern' like weather you guys are having!

4chalseys@blogger said...

Wow! I'm completely blown away. That went from a gorgeous photo to a stunning piece of art to canvas and put over a couch! Incredible!

Unknown said...

Gorgeous! And where is this?

Anita Johnson said...

Wow, the photos are so different that I could never pick which one I liked best. I don't use textures very well, but this has motivated me to try again!

Drew said...

That is beautiful! Hey, I just peeked at your FIF for this week (I'm such a cheater), and now I just want to delete mine. The crop you chose looks AWESOME on the photo. I bow to the master! :)

fxmixer said...

Really beautiful. Perfect treatment for this image.

Skeller said...

hehe. Maybe I will need to avoid more laundry tomorrow. I mean, investigate more textures and stuff. ;-)

Drew - GASP! *I* would never do such a thing ... ;-) And please don't delete - *yours* are always my favs!

Christal & Melissa -
It's Mono Lake. :-)

Rachel said...

You're amazing with textures. I've tried a few but I just can't get the hang of it. I guess I should get outside for a bit.

Courtney @ splashing grace said...

wow! gorgeous, amazing and all that! Wonder if I can talk all the kids into napping tomorrow so I can play with texture?

alpinekleins said...

Love your textures - thanks for the recipes, it's definitely on my list of skills to acquire!

Kristin