Tag Archives: Photoshop CC

Adding Texture to Photography

Credit: Chris Barbalis (Unsplash)

It’s hard to believe that it’s been so long since I last posted, but I’m back with this post about adding texture to photographs. The idea of adding texture to photographs has been an interest of mine for years. Over time I’ve taken several online classes both on how to make and on how to apply textures.

One of these classes was offered by Kim Klassen and I thoroughly enjoyed the class! Kim is a very talented photographer and artist. Happily, Kim is back with Texture Tuesday 2.0 this week. In her post she introduces a set of lovely mono grunge textures, and also a set of light and shadow overlays for download. In addition, she shares three videos with instructions on how to use the textures and the overlays. I urge everyone who is interested in textures to visit her website and download these assets!

Of course I wanted to experiment and play with the new textures. I opened up a still life photo from Unsplash to work with in Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud. The process that I followed is described below.

Here is the unedited photo:

Credit: Chris Barbalis (Unsplash)
Credit: Chris Barbalis (Unsplash)

As you can see, the image is rather dark but shows a fair amount of texture already. I decided to apply the 5.together texture from the collection and set the blend mode to Overlay. Also I lowered the opacity of the layer to 85%. Then I added a layer mask and painted over the white flower pot (on the right) so that it wasn’t too bright and distracting.

Photo with added texture
Photo with added texture

The effects of the applied texture are subtle, but the result is to brighten the objects in the photo and to bring out and enhance the various textures in the image.

It was a lot of fun to do and I look forward to playing more with the other textures!

New Tote Bags

Not long ago VIDA added tote bags to their product line. I’d been wanting to upload some of my designs to be featured on totes for a while and finally got around to it!

The first one (below) is a variation on a mandala that I created in Photoshop CC. I described the project in this post on my blog. For this variation I applied a different gradient and texture.

Textured Mandala Tote
Textured Mandala Tote

The second one (below) is a reuse of my first design for VIDA, an applied watercolor effect to a photo of a hibiscus flower that I took at Walt Disney World a couple of years ago. I continue to love the watercolor texture effect as applied to photographs!

Pink Hibiscus Tote
Pink Hibiscus Tote

Arts Classes Galore

Sorry to say that I’ve been absent here on my blog for the past couple of months. Following the completion of the Mandala Magic workshop (see previous posts), and also a busy holiday season, I found myself signing up for a Premium membership on Skillshare.com (referral link at the end of this post). Suffice it to say that I went a little wild taking a bunch of different design related courses! I’m very glad that I did, and I’ve learned a great deal.

For each class that you take on Skillshare you are invited to complete a project to demonstrate the new skills that you’ve learned as a result of taking the class. I’d like to share some of my projects here. There are more in process and I will add them to this post later on. Continue reading