Since there was some interest in how to play with textures and photos, and since I haven't loaded my pictures off of my card yet (the boys have been crazy adorable and I have some cute shots from a family shoot I did on Saturday), I'm going to share some of the fun of textures. But, before we start on that. I have to go into actions a little bit.
So, here is the original photo:
It's blurry, which I knew it would be, because I wanted to didn't think a still shot of an almost-three-year-old swinging a sword would be as interesting. But, I wanted a little bit more, I don't know...pop. So, I started playing with actions. There are two great, awesome, FREE sets over at the pioneer woman. You can also find lots of different actions by just doing a google search for photoshop actions, some free, some not so much. I love these ones by Ree, though. Thank you, Pioneer Woman, you rock!
So, for this photo, I used the 'seventies' action from set 2. I love this one. sersiously, It's my favorite.
I love the sun-kissed look it gives photos. Here I reduced its opacity a bit, to about 32%.
But, now comes the fun part. the texture. Textures are just pictures of texture that you lay over an image. You could walk out in your backyard, snap a picture of a rusted lawn chair, or a fence, or tree bark, and go to town playing with it. But, I like it when someone has shortened the step for me, or in other words, done the work already.
All of my textures have been free and texture king is a great place to start. Once you have downloaded your texture, open it up in photoshop, along with your image.
Drag and drop the texture onto the image you're using, making a second layer, and then resize as needed. Now, you should see a great big version of the texture. So, go and change the blending mode. I don't know how to do that thing where you put a picture of what it going in my photoshop program, so here is a post once again from that lady on the ranch that helps explain the blending modes, and she has pictures : )
I typically like using 'hard light', but this time I used 'vivid light', then I reduced it's opacity/transparency to about 40%
But, we still can't see the passion in that little warrior-girl's face can we? (this picture says so much I would love to soap-box about!), so we have to play around with a layer mask. I know, it sounds scary, but it's not too bad, really.
The simplest way to apply a layer mask is to click on the icon with a white circle in a grey box (once again, it would be more helpful if you could see this) at the bottom of the layer palettes box. Once you click on this, paint with black paint over any areas where you would like the texture to be removed, i.e. face, eyes.... and voila!
I hope that this makes some kind of sense. My next google search will be to hunt down how to include those very helpful pictures of what exactly I'm talking about in photoshop to be included in my post.
And, as a close, be passionate. swing a toy sword like it's a real one, dance like no one is watching, and live your life with everything that you have in you!
have a good day!
