Textures
Many of my photos have textures added to them. I like the little extra “something” that it gives.
You can find textures all over the internet. Some are free, some will cost you an arm and a leg.
Wanna know a secret?
I *often* make my own textures through photos.
How?
Here… I’ll show you 😉
First, here’s today’s pic –
ISO 1250 ~ f/2.2 ~ 1/250
Cool huh?
Here’s how it started…
This is what today’s picture looks like SOOC {Straight Out Of Camera.} I took some old keys, tied them together with a piece of yarn and placed them on our wood floor. Not a horrible pic, but I wanted to rock it out a bit.
Most of the textures that you can find online are just jpeg files that you layer over your original pic in Photoshop.
You can make your own by taking pictures of things you find outside or laying around your house! For today’s pic I wanted to add more random wood grain to it. The harsh lines of the wood floor were way too distracting to me.
The Hubs has an old wood pile outside. I snagged my camera and headed out there to find some “texture.”
Here’s the pic I took –
I loved how it was burned on one end and had lots of cracks and rings on it!
AKA lots of TEXTURE!
After uploading the SOOC shot of the keys and the wood texture to my computer I got busy in Photoshop. Starting with the SOOC pic of the keys I tweaked the contrast a bit to make the details in the keys and woodgrain to pop a bit more.
Next step was to “Place” the woodgrain texture over the original photo.
{Way back on Day 47 I made a quick video showing how to place textures in Photoshop. Click here to check it out!}
After changing the blend mode to “Hard Light” this is what I had –
Looks like a step backwards in the rocked out picture category, doesn’t it?
Stick with me for just another couple steps and you’ll LOVE it, I promise!
I lowered the opacity of the texture. That makes it a bit more “see through” allowing more of the original photo to show.
The big cracks from the texture were overlapping my keys a bit, making them look broken. That was fixed with a few brush strokes and a layer mask.
I also cropped in a bit removing some of the extra “stuff” from the edges and bringing the focus onto the keys.
Two more steps!
To make the picture seem even more vintage, I added a black & white adjustment layer. Photoshop allows you to tweak *all* adjustment layers so you can get exactly the look you are going for. Play with the different sliders in each adjustment layer until you love what you see.
For this pic, I didn’t like it completely B&W so I added a creamy “tint” to it {an option found in your B&W adjustment panel window.}
LAST step was to add the verbiage onto the pic using the Type Tool.
Done!
From this –
to THIS…
Whaddya think?
If you weren’t able to follow along with my written instructions, let me know in the comments below. If enough of you had trouble with it I can show you the steps in a video.
Rocking My 365 Project! 
