Texturing

Darren Troy C

Can someone point me in the general direction of how to get this accomplished? Newbie to PSE7 and wanting to combine rough textures along w/ portraiture and landscape images. I've asked this (in similar but not specifically the same manner) in a couple of other threads so I apologize if you are coming to this as a repeat, I know it can get frustrating. My upmost gratitude to anyone that can offer a directional pat on the back! Thanks! :thumb

pathfinder

Idlewild,

If I understand your question correctly, you are wanting to blend images of portraits and textures - say linen, tree truncks, denim, wood grain etc, with portraits to allow you to create an artistic interpretation of a portrait. Is this correct?

You can shoot double exposures with some cameras, but most of these images are created by blending layers in Photoshop, as that technique allows so much greater precision and control.

I am moving this thread to Finishing School, and I think this is really about post processing and not about shooting technique.

JustPlainMe

Idlewild wrote:

Can someone point me in the general direction of how to get this accomplished? Newbie to PSE7 and wanting to combine rough textures along w/ portraiture and landscape images. I've asked this (in similar but not specifically the same manner) in a couple of other threads so I apologize if you are coming to this as a repeat, I know it can get frustrating. My upmost gratitude to anyone that can offer a directional pat on the back! Thanks!

Okay, well you can find lots of free textures on flickr---if you search for "texture" you'll find about a bazillion. You can download them, they'll be in jpeg form. Save them where you can find them.

Then open up Elements, open your photo, and open your texture. Click on the texture, make sure you focus your texture layer, click CTRL + A then CTRL + C. Double-click your photo in your photo bin (the place on the bottom of the screen where you can see all your open files). Press CTRL + V to paste the texture layer on top of your photo. Then change your blending mode (on the right side of the screen, in the layers palette) to whatever---experiment and see what you like. If you like a particular texture, try changing the opacity---the transparency of the layer---to get a lighter or darker effect.

I use PSE 6, it's been a while since I used 7, I think there are some minor workflow differences. If you can't get enough help here, please PM me and I can walk you through it. I have a tutorial I wrote for overlays, which is the same concept, that I can send you.

What you're doing isn't digital scrapping per se, but this site has great tutorials and threads in their discussion forum on all sorts of photo effects. I did this picture with a texture overlay I found on Flickr, I inverted the colors and used a blending mode of hard light at a low opacity.



Hope this helps!

Darren Troy C

Thanks!