Using Textures... Share yours!!

[sarahgirl777]

Do you use textures to process your photos sometimes? If so I'd love to hear where you go to find them, I have found some on flickr, but searching through them all takes time. Anyone have any free textures they want to share links to? What are your favorite ones? Also I'd love to see anyones photos who have used textures.

Here is one of mine, It was taken with a solid black background and I used the texture found here to spruce it up some. I think I used overlay, but I can't remember. But I did erase it from over their skin.

[lputman]

That looks real good! I use textures from flickr.

[calmaxgan]

I have never used textures (didn't even know about them!) but from the looks of these it should be something to put on my to-do list.

[sarahgirl777]

Originally Posted by lputman

That looks real good! I use textures from flickr.

Great photos, thank you for sharing. I really like the texture on the 2nd one.

[sarahgirl777]

Originally Posted by calmaxgan

I have never used textures (didn't even know about them!) but from the looks of these it should be something to put on my to-do list.

I just learned about them recently, so I'm hoping this thread may help with some more ideas. What you do is take the original photo as a background, then add the texture photo as a layer, depending on the photo sometime overlay works great, sometimes multiply, you just have to play around with it and see what looks the best. Then I adjust the opacity of the layer and sometimes erase to transparency over the skin, just depends if it makes them look like they have a rash or something, lol.

Here is another one I just did the other day, this had a solid cream colored paper background and I used a texture overlay on it too. I really like the outcome of it, I'm hoping they do to!

[Saralonde]

I like using textures. I went through a texture phase when I did my threesixtyfive self-portrait series.


There are a lot of textures on flickr. The ninianlif ones, like you used, and ghostbones are particularly good. Have you looked at the Textures for Layers group?

[JodyGall]

I think it was private who turned me on to this site! I love it!

http://grungetextures.com/

I also like making my own, then they are the same size as my pictures, so it works out great.

[calmaxgan]

sometimes erase to transparency over the skin

Would you mind sharing how you do this? I tried one yesterday, using the eraser tool (CS3) and even with lowering the opacity always had quite an obvious line where I stopped erasing. Do you use something different?

I am really liking these textured photos more the more I look at them. Would love to see some other examples...

[sarahgirl777]

Originally Posted by calmaxgan

Would you mind sharing how you do this? I tried one yesterday, using the eraser tool (CS3) and even with lowering the opacity always had quite an obvious line where I stopped erasing. Do you use something different?

I am really liking these textured photos more the more I look at them. Would love to see some other examples...

Occasionally that happens to me too, so what I have also done is draw a rough selection line around the subjects (On the texture layer), then mask it and do a gausian blur usually around 200 strength or so, sometimes more sometimes less, the I delete/erase that selected area so it will gradually go out to the texture. I hope that makes sense, I use GIMP so I'm not sure if it is exactly the same or not, if that's what you use let me know and I'll give you better instructions.

[calmaxgan]

Thanks - I'll give that a try.