Basic Layer mask tutorial

Another wet day here so I decided to do a very basic tutorial on masking in photoshop. Using a mask is how I remove unwanted texture from parts of an image, it's a great way to do this as it's fully reversible and adjustable.
Mouseover the image above to see the before photo.
I started with a layer of Chlorophyll @ hard light 80%. It looked okay but the texture was covering the flower a bit too much. So I added a layer mask to that layer. Make sure your texture layer is selected, click on the mask button at the bottom of the layers palette and the white layer mask box appears beside the texture layer in the palette.
(click on the following screenshots for a bigger view)

Select a large soft brush, I used one of around 20 % opacity, and make sure your foreground and background colours are set to black and white -if you press "D" on the keyboard they will reset automatically.
You can toggle between black and white by pressing the "X" key.
Make sure your mask layer is active by clicking in the white square and with black as the brush colour, softly brush over parts of the image that you want to remove texture. If you make a mistake simply change the brush colour to white.  Here is the flower after some texture removal.

On some subjects I use a graduated fill rather than a brush to remove the texture. Once again make sure your colours are set to black and white and that your mask is active.  Select the gradient tool and the type of gradient - for this photo I would choose a  a circular gradient. Then it's just a matter of drawing a line from the centre of your subject outwards to remove some of the texture. This can be redone until you get the effect you like.  On landscapes I often use a linear gradient to remove texture from the sky (or the ground).
Next I added a couple more textures.
Archival Canvas @ multiply 62%
Fly edge 15 @ multiply 78 %

 At this stage I decided that the Chlorophyll layer was a bit too green and dominant  so I reduced its opacity to 43%
And finally added a levels adjustment to tweak the tone

Hope this has been helpful and as always if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask.

Don't forget our earlier packs...click on the sidebar links, the combo offer for packs One and Two is still running too :-)

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and Two!

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

Please note that this is big, almost 400 mb file so the download may take a while. Average reported download time for this pack varies from 15 to 20 mins.

Barely There

I took this one at my parents house last weekend, the wall in their conservatory is a lovely blue colour and makes a great backdrop.
As well as a recipe today, I'm going to try and explain how I change the colour of textures or de-saturate them in photoshop by using a Clipping Mask, the big advantage of doing it this way as you can easily go back later and change things.

I started off by duplicating the background.
Hue Saturation layer to de-saturate the image slightly
Dark blue colour layer @ exclusion 29% with some of the colour removed from the focus flower
yellow/green colour layer @ screen 22%
Cholorophyl Texture @ Overlay 100%
and the photo looked like this:

Which was too green for my tastes so I decided to de-saturate the texture.
Press the alt key and at the same time click on the adjustment layers button at the bottom of your layers palette and select a hue/saturation adjustment layer. Release the alt key.
A box will open

 

Check the "use Previous layer as a clipping mask" box and press okay.

Your layers palette will now look like this with the  hue saturation layer attached to the texture layer.

 

And by adjusting the sliders in the hue/saturation adjustment box you can tweak the colour to taste. In my case the settings were Hue -16, saturation -100 and lightness -16. As I said before, the advantage of this method is you can go back and tweak things very easily and turn off the adjustment layer too if so desired. 

Next I added:

Apple Blush (pack 1) @ soft light 100% this was desaturated a little using the above method, I also removed some of the texture from the focus flower.

Grosgrain (Pack 1) @ Screen 27 % with some of the texture removed as above.

I finished with a  curves layer to give the colour a final tweak.

Of course you can use any of the adjustment layers as a clipping mask, it's a great tool!

Hope you've followed all that, feel free to ask questions and I'll do my best to answer.

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morning mist

I was emailed a few weeks ago, asking how to create a mist effect
with textures. My tardy answer is now shown here (sorry Bob!)
This image was captured on the mountains last January.
I'd not used these particular images because although I shot them in raw, It still had blown out areas.
However, with our new textures it came to me just last night, a bit of a revelation! - Don't bother hiding the blow-outs, simply lighten and texture the rest of the image! :-)
Necropolis is still my all time personal favorite texture, but these days I tend to use a tweaked version. Just the other day, you might recall,
I used a dark green version?
You can create your own easily by following this tip:
With the aid of the Colour sliders at the top in photoshop I turned this texture to a dark indigo colour with the slider pushed all the way to the right. I then save and use like a new texture, the beauty of this new texture are - no warm/brown tones!
How to:
Top of Photoshop - Image - Adjustments - Hue/Saturation -
Hue @ +180
Saturation @-28
Lightness @ -23
Save this Texture and name it 'Necropolis Indigo' for future tutorials!
Here's my texture recipe
Necropolis (turned into an indigo blue as discussed) Opacity - Soft Light @ 89%
Necropolis (indigo blue), used on blown out highlights at the top only) Opacity - Color Burn @ 8%
Apple Blush - Opacity - Overlay @ 68%

At this point something wasn't quite right, the sky colour didn't really blend with the picture. So I flattened all my layers and started with a second onslaught of texture! This time from Tex Box Two.
If you look at the base image you'll see the bottom of the image is very dark with no mist, it wasn't really working.
So I pulled out the 'Leaden Hall' texture - don't ask me why I thought this might work - I was lucky!
I flipped this texture vertically and so the pale part was at the bottom. The Skirt at the top was pulled above the picture top and cut off.
To create the extra fog and pull together, I simply turned this Leaden Hall texture to - Opacity - Screen @ 61%
I blurred it a little and I also changed this layer to B/W and changed the colour to a green/blue with the top sliders.
I then removed the top half of the texture with a very soft eraser brush, used selectively.
Last finishing texture was:

Chlorophyll Opacity - Soft Light @ 57%
Used to just add a slight vignette at the edges.
Further colour tweaks to finish.

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The Happy Couple - Flypaper Textured :-)

About a month ago I visited a local beach with my son, intending to take photos of him but when we looked over the sand dunes we were surprised to see this pair of NZ Sea Lions a short distance away. Naturally I rushed back to the car to exchange my short lens for a longer version as these guys don't like you getting too close, they are surprisingly fast movers too and you had to keep an eye on them especially if you got between them and the sea.
This is but one of the many photos I took that afternoon and was processed with Flypaper Textures to add a bit of depth and a vignette

The Flypaper Texture I used was Caramel Soft, as well as adding texture it gives a slight vignette effect. I used it at Soft Light 100% This layer was blurred an desaturated.
As well as the texture I used a vintage film effect (a combination of curves, colour layers etc) to mute the colours.
Once I was happy with the effect I used the stamp visible command on a PC it's Ctrl -Alt -Shift -E duplicated that layer and changed it to a Smart object from the drop down filter menu, this wonderful feature which was introduced in PS CS3 lets you go back and edit your filter settings.
Then I used Render lighting from the Filter menu to add more of a vignette. From the render lighting dialogue I selected a 2'oclock spotlight and omni and then tweaked the settings, this can take a while as there are lots of controls to play with, as well as intensity you can also change the colour of the light and the size etc.
See the following screenshot for more details.

I reduced the opacitiy of the lighting layer to about 50% After a final curves layer to adjust the contrast I called it done!

Flypaper Textures video tutorials

We were contacted by the lovely Kayla from Digiscrap101 a while back, she wanted to do a tutorial using our textures,
and of course we were happy to oblige. Here they are, hot off the press and it's very easy to follow.
Enjoy:-)

Photoshop CS3 Video


Photoshop Elements Video:

Honesty (texture tutorial and recipe)

In this quick and easy tutorial, I'll illustrate how I transformed this photo of honesty in a bottle into something more painterly and rich. Mouseover the photo to see the before and after effects.

The first texture I tried was Pompeii stucco, an easy-to-use texture that adds depth.

I opened the texture in photoshop and dragged it on top of my photo, don't worry if your texture is a different size or shape from your image, just resize to fit.

Once your texture is covering your image, have a play with the blending modes and opacities. Here it is at Soft Light 47%

I rarely use just one texture on an image so I tried some more and ended up using a layer of Necropolis at Overlay -40%  and a layer of Elysium at Colour burn -14%

 

Just a quick curves adjustment layer to tweak the tone and contrast a little. Click "Create new fill or adjustment layer" button at the bottom of your layers pallet  and selecting curves from the drop down list.

And we're done!

Mist in the trees tutorial

For this misty mountain top landscape,
I used just two flypaper textures,
Raw Linen @ Linear burn setting 46% and opacity at 63%
although I liked it, I didn't need the texture, so I blurred it with Gaussian blur for a smooth finish.
Necropolis was used in Overlay @ 55%, Opacity 56%
So we come to the 2nd brown version.

I really wanted a fresher look so I went to the top of the page,
image - adjustments - colour balance, with Necropolis-only selected,
and moved the sliders as shown, the Necropolis texture becomes bright green!

 

Flatten and crop square.
Et voila, a nice fresh but misty/moody landscape!

Basic Texture Tutorial

In this first tutorial of what we hope will be a continuing series, I'll show you how to easily transform a photo by adding our Flypaper Textures. Mouseover to see the transformation.

The original photo is nice enough, but I thought texture would add more depth and interest.
First thing to do is duplicate your background.
 I opened my Flypaper Texture folder and decided that pompeii stucco might be the best one to try first. Choosing which texture goes with each photo is something you learn with practice and experience as texturing is not a "one size fit's all" kind of thing.

Open the texture in photoshop (or your editing programme) then with the move tool selected  drag it from the layers palette on top of your image. It doesn't matter if the texture is a different size or shape from your photo, you just resize  to fit by using the drag handles on the corners.

Once your texture is covering your image, have a play with the blending modes and opacities.

Here is my texture at  Soft light blending mode and 100% opacity

It looks okay but lacks depth, so I had a play with several different textures, you'll find when you're using texture that your delete button will be your best friend as you try out combinations.

Anyway, I finally hit upon using our Bruised Saffron texture at multiply and 37%

Then another layer of Pompeii Stucco at soft light 37%

Almost done, but the colours need a bit of a tweak. So I added an curves adjustment layer by clicking on "Create new fill or adjustment layer" button at the bottom of your layers pallete and selecting curves from the drop down list.
Once the dialogue box opens I played with red, green and blue curves  until I got the tone I wanted. A little goes a long way with curves so it pays to be gentle.

And voila! We're done!

And just so you can see a bit better the effect that the texture has had, here's a close-up showing some of the detail.

Of course with different texture choices and opacities it would be quite a different photo, so just treat this is a guide.

Any questions or suggestions for future tutorials, drop us a line, or leave a comment.