May 12, 2010
Before & After: Textured Reunion
One of the ladies on the photography board took a great shot of two men. Here’s the story: one of the men in the picture below recently celebrated his 40th birthday. As a part of his birthday surprise, his wife flew in a childhood friend from Ireland that he hadn’t seen in 10 years. We thought that this photo might be even better with a little texture. 
Old Friends Before and After
I started with her black and white – looks good to me, so why mess with it other than cropping/centering the photo. Then I started adding texture layers. Because I’m currently being asked a number of texture-related questions, I found another tutorial that may help you understand the steps. Essentially, you’ll want to open your photo as well as the texture (jpg) files that you want to use. Leave them all open in your bin. When you’re ready to use them, just drag them on top of your photo. You can always rearrange them later. Here’s the order, blending mode and opacity that I used for this photograph. I should also mention that all textures were pulled from Shadowhouse Creations (hint: the textures I used are in that link…well most of them, the rest can be found on that site thought). 
  1. Background – this is your bottom layer. 
  2. Background Copy 1 (click ctrl+J to create a copy) – Screen – 44%
  3. Aged2 – Overlay – 88%
  4. Ghost4 – Multiply – 78%
  5. Chaos2 – Soft Light – 55%
  6. Background Copy 2 – Hard Light – 38%
  7. Difference Maker – Soft Light – 28%
  8. Grungebox9 – Soft Light – 42%
I hope you like what I’ve done…and that you’re inspired to try texture too! Let me know if you have questions.
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