This is an advanced process and does require a working knowledge of Photoshop CS.

In this mini-tutorial Denise will walk you through some creative texturing applications as well as multiple filtering applications to bring your textured images to life. You will learn how to blend an image with the right textures as well as some highlighting techniques that will help you create an artistic stylized image.

Choosing the Texture

You should generally, Ok always in my opinion, choose a texture that matches or compliments the features of the image. In other words, don’t use a strong pattern on a dainty flower. Similarly, don’t use colors that are more dominant than the color pallet in the image. We are trying to compliment the image with additional textures and colors, not overwhelm the image. Don’t confuse strong contrast with strong colors. Contrast can be used with great effect.

When you choose a texture think outside the box. Remember that not only are you going to change your image, but you can also change the features of the texture you are going to use. For example, if your image has strong horizontal lines and the texture that you really want to use has vertical lines, just rotate the texture image to match what you want. The same goes for hues in the texture image. If you need azure not teal, just tweak the texture image rather than trying to find a “perfect” match.

Applying the Texture

OK, now let’s have some fun…!

Open the image and the texture in Photoshop and tile the images.

Drag the texture on top of the image. The original image should now be the Background Layer and the texture will be Layer 1.

Adjust the size and position of the texture layer so that it covers your image completely.

Now that you have the texture layer on top of the base image you can begin to experiment with the Blend Modes. This is somewhat of a trail and error phase so experiment with all of them. Multiply, Soft Light and Overlay are the ones that I use most often.

Fine Tuning Your Art

Usually you will want to reveal some details form the image. Add a layer mask to the top layer and start by using a soft brush set to 40% opacity and feathering it outward by starting at the center of your subject.

Finishing the Art

Add a new Layer and then apply filters to the image.

Filter>Distort>Diffuse Glow

Start with settings Graininess 0, Glow Amount 1, Clear Amount 9. Experiment with these number with your image. I often adjust the opacity level or even a new blending mode to get an effect that I find pleasing. Remember you are the only that has to be happy, have fun with and play with the settings.

Add another new Layer and apply some light.

Filter>Render>Lighting Effects. Start with Light Type Omni, Intensity Slider 35, Focus 40. As with this whole adventure in the world of textures: experiment, experiment and experiment!

Before and After Image Gallery

[View with PicLens]

Resources

Shadow House Creations has a ton of free textures on their website. http://shadowhousecreations.blogspot.com/

RADLAB has a plugin called “Dirty Pictures” that will automate the process of adding the textures. It is $149 and available on their website. http://www.gettotallyrad.com/products/dirty-pictures/

Denise Ippolito shares more tutorials as well as her workshops and eBooks on her website. http://deniseippolito.smugmug.com/

This was the first image that I took. It was about 10 minutes after sunrise so the light was very gold and soft. This light was bounced back on to the pond by the brown and green reeds at the back of the pond. It gave the water an incredible golden glow and fortunately this Ring-necked Duck has a yellow eye and a black head which was a very cool look on this image. The water was soo  great that I decided to back off of the zoom (that’s what that ring on the front of your camera lens is for!) a little bit so you could see how cool the light looked.

The next picture was a few minutes later, but in a shaded part of the pond. The light was still golden or as photographers like to say, “sweet light”, but because this one was a bit shaded the water has more of a coppery look to it.

The next image the sun was getting higher and most of the sweet light was gone and the ripples from the breeze where reflecting the blue sky.

This last image the sweet light was all gone and no longer being reflected from the reeds so the water was now a bright blue reflection of a sunny spring day.

Here is a map of the “duck pond” at Tierra Verde where the images where taken. There are always ducks there and often 7 or 8 species. It’s a good place to take a quick look while you are on the way to or from the fantabulously birdy, Ft. DeSoto.

This video shows how easy it is to move a folder in Lightroom.

This video shows how easy it is to move a folder in Lightroom.

Lightroom on the MAC installs both 32-bit and 64-bit versions and by default activates the 32-bit version. Which is fine. (Under Windows you have to select which version to install, so you guys don’t need to read anymore.)

When I opened the More Info panel for Lightroom it showed that indeed that “Open in 32 bit mode” was not checked. However, the credits screen did not show that Lightroom was running in 64-bit mode! I am sure that you know how to get to the info screen via Finder>Applications>Adobe Lightroom. Here is another screen shot to help.

My solution was to select “Open in 32 Bit Mode” and then open and close Lightroom. Go back and then de-select the 32-bit mode and voila, when Lightroom opened, I’ve got 64-bit!

I have to say it is a gigantic difference, duh! Going from 3GB of RAM to 10 is going to make a difference. I just got the MAC and so when something isn’t right, I assume user error. After my discovery I was very excited and so I called several friends. To my shock it wasn’t me, they were not in 64-bit either and they knew what they were doing. I bet a lot of you are not in 64-bit mode either.

After the switch, Lightroom is now turbo-charged and changes made to images in the develop module are instantaneous. This is what I was expecting with the new MAC…WOW! So check your settings to make sure that you are also in WOW mode!

It is ironic that the first step in digital workflow is to actually delete most of the images that you have worked so hard to create. The images that were created with promise and passion must now be looked on without emotion or feeling and be culled, killed, deleted, zapped, smushed, axed! Such a cruel sounding words for your dear pictures Webster’s defines culled as, “Something picked out from others, especially something rejected because of inferior quality.” See, you are doing it because of ‘inferior quality,’ that should make you feel a little better.

Editing is the process of going to get rid of the inferior images now, not later. You don’t need them now and you’ll certainly never need them in the future, so why keep them on your hard drives? Yes, I know hard drives are cheap, but so what? Why keep inferior images when you have better ones? Software is always leaping forward and the things that we can do with images today are staggering to say the least. However, they are never going to create software that fixes focus, or composition, or subject or put chopped feet back on. Well, Ok you can sorta put feet back on, but ignore that for now, I’m on a mission. So lets get started.

Once your images are on your hard drive, use the browser of your choice to go through and get rid of the junk. I am currently using Lightroom and so this article is Lightroom centric, but the principles still apply. I use Lightroom because the process is so easy and simple and fast. Let’s start looking at the images and on this first pass our mission is to cull out the junk. We are not going to rate them or OOH and AHH, OK a little, but keep focused on getting rid of the bad stuff. When you see a stinker you simply hit the X key and that image is now marked for deletion. You have not deleted anything yet, but you have given notice that you intend to put that image in the trash can! Proceed through all of your images happily deleting the out of focus, legs cut off, bird flew out of the frame or otherwise obviously a waste of memory space images.

If you are an advanced user feel free to get rid of obvious dupes here as well. You neophytes, just get rid of the really bad ones. Now go to the grid view of the Library module and select the rejected flag. This will now show you all of the images that you just culled. Take a look at all of these images to make sure that you didn’t get falg happy and cull one too many images. If they are indeed all bad, select them all and then hit the delete key. Lightroom will ask if you want them out of the collection or deleted from the disk. You know what you have to do, deep breath…delete from disk! God job, Grasshopper. Don’t you feel better knowing those icky images are never going to show up to shame you on the internet?

This image shows a Lightroom screenshot.

Now this is why my editing process is called 5 star culling. Some people see that they have all of these stars and colors and other hoohaws to mark their images for something. We really only need 3 stars and one of those is special. Why in the world would you want to rank one of your images as a 1 star image? To me that says it is already marked for deletion so why not get rid of it now before your emotions over rule reason and you keep the stinker. If it is a 1 star it shouldn’t be in your library. Keep your best and then the best of your best. I’m a 5 star photographer and so I only want my best, 4 stars and the best of my best, my 5 star images. You should be doing the same thing.

So, in this pass of reviewing images we are going to go through the images and you now have 3 options (in my system) to deal with images, rank it 3 stars, 4 stars or delete it. We’ll get to the 5 star thing in a minute. So now is when we have to be critical of our work. The first cull was easy the second is much more emotional. So look at your images, the best get 4 stars and the ones that deserve a second look get 3 stars. If it doesn’t meet those categories then it gets the X and is deleted. This is where you get rid of all of the duplicate shots. You know that 8 frame burst that captured a stationary object…yes that one, keep 1 delete 7. Mark the keeper as a 4 and move on. Also, get rid of all semi-duplicates. These are the ones where the subject eyes are closed or the head is turned or something is off. There will be times when the image is good and you are not sure about it, give these a 3 star rating. You should still only keep the best of the series from these 3 star shots. As with the round one culls, use the flag to find and then select the rejects, delete them. Now, I select all of my 4 stars and move them to my working folder. I keep a folder that are my “to be edited” images. I like to do this step as it helps me with my filing system. That is another article, stay tuned. I now move the 3 stars to a further review folder. I usually wait a week or two or even more sometimes and then come back and look at these images with fresh eyes. I then repeat the culling process on these images.

Now the 5 star pay off. We have now edited the images from the photo shoot and we have only processed our best shots. We have deleted the junk and are really satisfied with life. Now is when you reward yourself with that last 5th star. The 5th star is reserved for the best images in your library. Your library should never have more than about 100 5 star images at any given time. These are the 100 shots that you use to brag with friends and family, to show publishers your chops and to just enjoy after the work that you put in to making those images. After you reach 100 then when you want to nominate a new 5 star shot move a lesser image to a 4 star image. Lightroom has something called smart collections and it will automatically keep track of all images that you have rated 5 stars and with the click of a mouse all of your best are right there ready to be proud of. Hey you are a 5 star photographer now too!

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