How to apply a texture

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Okay, so I've been thinking about this for awhile and finally decided to write up a little 'mini' tutorial for applying layers to photos. This is by No means the only way to do it, I'm sure there are better and faster ways, but this is what works for me.

These instructions can be used for many versions of photoshop, as of right now, I use CS3 and am working on getting CS4 soon. Note that this is for those of you that have some Basic knowledge of photoshop

First things first, you want to select and copy the texture that you want to use, it doesn't matter the size, it can be resized later. Open the photo that you would like to texture and duplicate the layer under the layers menu, I do this just as a backup because I tend to destroy the original in one way or another. Now PASTE the texture layer on the photo layer, you should have 3 layers now. Use the transform tool and grab the texture layer from the corner and drag it to the edges of the photo so that it lines up with the photo, hit Enter when it is centered.

Next, it's just a matter of playing around with opacity until it looks good to you, by increasing or decreasing the Opacity and Fill sliders under the Layers menu, you can change the density of the texture. This can always be tweaked later on as well.

After you've decided on the contrast of your texture, you can Really bring out the colors and texture by adjusting the menu Overlay slider under the layers pallet, you can do this in a variety of ways:

I find some of the ones I use the most (and blend well with most photos) are these:

MULTIPLY (to make it dramatically darker)
OVERLAY (which blends the colors pretty evenly, but still darkens the photo)
SOFT LIGHT (very subtle change)and
HARD LIGHT (which brings out the highlights and gives it a more burnt feel)

It's all in how you want the overall photo to look.

*If you'd like to take it one step further, you can blend the texture in a bit more by highlighting areas without texture. This helps enhance the areas you want to put more focus on, while at the same time keeping the background textured. You can add a layer mask to the texture layer (which is much better than destroying all that hard work with an eraser-hard lesson I had to learn myself) and use the paintbrush tool (black to erase, white to replace) and paint over the area you want to de-texturize (yea, I just made up a word there). I would also lower the opacity on the paintbrush so the effect is more subtle, you can use multiple strokes if you need to.

Remember, you can Always go back into your History pallete and go back a few steps if you mess up!

So that's IT! You should have a beautifully textured photo now, just like an old photo thats probably been sitting out in the sun for Way too long

Also, here are a few resources to get you started, I have so much trouble finding the right texture, so I just make them myself:


My Textures

Some examples:



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