Fresh

These are the berries of the European Spindle or Euonymus europaeus more commonly called the Spindleberry, or at least that's what I've always called it. The name comes from the fact that its dense pale wood is easily worked and was once used for making spindles and knitting needles. For most of the year it's just another green shrub, but in autumn it transforms -the leaves turn a russet shade and it's covered with these pink "fruit" which contain bright orange seeds. I remember the bush my mother had just down the path, it was where the tea pot was always emptied (real tea not the tea bag variety) as apparently spindles loved tea leaves, it always rewarded us with a brilliant display of autumn colour, and rewarded the birds with lots of berries.

I processed this as follows:
Brushed Rose (Summer Painterly) @ Overlay 100%
Pistachio (Summer Painterly) @ Overlay 100%
Copy of background @ Soft Light 12%
Ming (Tex Box 2) @ Soft Light 100 %
It looked okay like this but was a bit bright.
So I then merged all these layers, on PC press Ctrl -Alt -Shift -E
Duplicated the merged layer and set it at Screen 10%
Then tweaked the toning with Selective colour and Hue saturation blending modes, the settings are a matter of taste and involves a bit of "playing" with the various sliders.

See the photo a bit bigger on Flickr

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

See all our packs and deals on one Page

In the corner of a French field

This French farm stone mazet or finca was leaning in an alarming way, anybody who's seen the leaning tower of Pisa would instantly get the idea! So, I corrected it by slightly pinching the ground with the CS warp.

These structures were lived in by poor Mediterranean farmers, normally just two rooms, one up, one down. The animals slept downstairs and the farmer on top.
Often the iron animal feeders will still be in place along a wall with a corner cooking/fireplace just where it was over 100 years ago.
Outside there is always a deep artesian well, normally these wells have a fig tree growing next or even out of them.
If you ever need to find the old well in the south of France, just look for a fig tree, and that's where it will be. In my first French village house I found the old garden well by this very same method!

For this image, I had in mind a kind of bashed-up and rusting Victorian biscuit tin lid. It sometimes helps if you have even a slight vision or end goal in mind, then you can then start opening your chosen chocolate box of textures and try each of them!

Firstly, I always like to re-size my image to 4000 pixels along one side, to match the textures, this helps speed-up the selection process.
I'll normally double up the base image and use a slight painterly effect.
only then do I start to play with the textures..

As ever, I list the first texture used to the last, as sequence is important!

Aquarius - Linear Light @ 72%
Brushed Rose - Color @ 30%
Europium - Vivid Light @ 50% (brushed from center and dark corners)
Touchstone - Soft Light @ 57% (brushed from lower left dark corner)
Mouse - Overlay @ 100% (brushed from over the top of the sky)
Mouse - Hard Light @ 60% (flipped horizontally, balancing the last)
Stygian Tin - Luminosity @ 79% (turned terracotta in saturation)
Base image - Overlay @ 100%
Desert Djinn - Normal @ 10%
Fly Edges number 30 - Saturation @ 60%
(some of the left and right edges clipped off)

You can see the finished big version on my Flickr.
Please feel free to leave feedback!:-)

Summer Painterly Pack
36 large textures for only $40

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box 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, perhaps a coffee break would be a good idea between downloads!

New Summer Painterly ~ Pack 3!

Click the image for a full page view!

Over the past year we have had several email requests asking for textures that brighten images and also textures give a more painterly look. To tell you the truth, we wanted them ourselves! With this in mind, we started working on the Summer Painterly set. And here it is, all of them have been tested over the past few weeks, and we've already had some great feedback!

We have lovely summer skies, shimmering with cool brush strokes, riding the desert on cracked old leather saddles you'll find basking turtles on rare metallic touchstones, and the finest silk will envelop your images! Your landscapes will be enlivened, skies will become painterly and your colours will zing! All pulled together with some angelic names pulled from ancient mythology and classic fantasy fiction.

Anyhow, here's the science bit!
We've managed to cram a whopping 36 full sized professional textures into this new pack, this is the biggest normal Tex pack we could make!
Yet, after downloading we have found it still only takes us around 20 minutes, so you'll still need that coffee! Now we can finally start the Summer Painterly tutorials!
Here comes Summer! :-)

Summer Painterly Pack
36 large textures for only
$40

For downloads please click the add to cart button, a download code will be sent to you on payment.
Please note that this is big file so the download may take a while perhaps a coffee break would be a good idea while you're downloading.

The textures are high quality,  4000 by 4000 px square at 300dpi and can be used for your personal or commercial work. All our textures can be used in any editing programme that supports the use of layers, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Gimp etc


Textures in the pack are: Absinthe Vert, Aquarius, Azriel Map, Baltamos Blue, Brushed Rose, Cobalt Cloud, Dawn Grunge, Desert Djinn, Dorian Gray, Elyon Grunge, Europium, Evening Veil, Ezekiel Plum, Gorgon Hide, Harbour Wall, Iorek Ice, Iridescent Brush, Matmos Lake, Moleskin, Mouse, Mulberry Silk, Nimbus Cloud, Nuriel Clouds, Oxford Parchment, Pan's Sky, Pistachio, Purple Haze, Sahara Saddle, Sariel Leather, Serafina Sky, Sygian Tin, Touchstone, Turtle Shell,  Uriel Green, Verdigris Mist, Zuriel Stone.

Snow Road

I have just returned from a wonderful long weekend at Lake Tekapo which is nestled at  the base of New Zealand's Southern Alps. While the weather wasn't perfect, the magnificent snowy mountains were hidden from view by low cloud most of the time. Fortunately, I did manage to capture several soft misty atmospheric scenes, which we find are perfect for texture processing.
This photo was taken on the road down from the Roundhill ski area high above the glacier fed Lake Tekapo. I certainly got my snow fix up there!

Now the processing, because of the subject matter I wanted to keep it relatively simple.
Pistachio @ overlay 100% with some of the texture removed from the road as it made it too green.
Pistachio @ soft light 100% I desaturated this layer a little because at full saturation the greenness was overwhelming the subject
Touchstone @ soft light 64 % this one probably wasn't necessary but it added depth.
Sariel Leather @ soft light 41%
And that was it :-) See it on Flickr

Summer Painterly Pack
36 large textures for only
$40

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box 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, perhaps a coffee break would be a good idea between downloads!

Venice waterways

This shot, taken on the beautiful Venice waterways with a cheap Konica Minolta digital camera a few years ago without the aid of a much needed polarizer filter in the early summer sun was left unused until now, when I had the idea of extending the sky area and changing it into a square format from a dodgy landscape.

As you can see from this image, blown out skies shouldn't be too much of a problem, if you want to go the painterly way!
When starting to rescue an image, try to start with the sky, for this reason we included several sky combination's as summer skies often have this problem. Once the blown out areas of images are sorted you can start pulling the image together with all-over texture. As ever, my only problem is knowing when to stop!
I frequently go back to click off textures, to see if the result is better, often I'll then remove a couple as I did here.
Finishing with Touchstone, my personal favorite texture, which was designed with skies in mind!

Firstly I duplicated and used a slight painterly effect.
The rest of the textures are used from the first listed to the last in CS4.

Duplicated base image - Normal @ 69% slight painterly effect with watercolour @ 10% and poster edges @ 4%
Pans Sky ~ Soft Light @ 100% (Over Sky and horizon only, brushed away from rest of image)
Pans Sky ~ Soft Light @ 100% desaturated (Over Sky and horizon only, brushed away from rest of image)
Verdigris Mist ~ Vivid Light @ 45%
Matmos Lake ~ Soft Light @ 100% (flipped vertically so the dark side is over the sky)
Mouse ~ Soft Light @ 70% (rotated so the dark side is over the sky)
Europium ~ Soft Light @ 42%
Touchstone ~ Overlay @ 100% (brushed away from gondolas)
A slight auto colour tweak to finish!
As ever, you can see the finished big version on my Flickr.

Summer Painterly Pack
36 large textures for only
$40

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box 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, perhaps a coffee break would be a good idea between downloads!

Symphony

In winter when there aren't many flowers around you really appreciate anything that even looks like a flower, I spied these at the local botanic garden overhanging a path and couldn't resist a photo. I have a previous photo of these on Flickr but decided to give this one the Flypaper Summer painterly treatment.

The processing was simple!
Brushed Rose @ vivid light 58%
Absinthe Vert @ Hard light  61%

I'm loving our new Flypaper pack and am hoping to try them out on some snowy winter scenes soon as I'm away for a few days break at Lake Tekapo near NZ's Southern Alps.

Summer Painterly Pack
36 large textures for only
$40

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box 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, perhaps a coffee break would be a good idea between downloads!

musical hotel

Just around the corner from my house the famous composer-
Camille Saint-Saëns stopped for several weeks, when it was a hotel,
its the one with the open window. I'd been meaning to take a decent picture of this corner for ages, but over bright sunlight, dark shadows and the bane of my life, parked cars had always stopped me. So when I came across it in a clear state with nice soft light, I jumped at it!

The original picture is about half as big again, the part used is from the upper-center of a portrait format. I had to warp the house tops into a sort-of straight vertical, to get them square. Leaving a slightly rounded top to the houses, which I quite liked in an illustrative kind of way!

I spent quite a long time cleaning up/removing the electric wires and bollards and signs from the frontage, as is shown. I mostly used lasso on the bollards and a clone tool on the wires. I wanted a kind-of original antique look, leaving only the street light,
which could have been gas lit at the turn of the last century when the composer stayed here.

From first summer painterly textures used to the last;
Iorek Ice Multiply @ 100%
Aquarius Luminosity @ 77%
Aquarius Soft Light @ 60%
Desert Djinn Soft Light @ 100% (flipped vertically)
3 copies of base picture with sky brushed away @
Pin Light 30%
Soft Light 99%
Soft Light 99%
This was to beef up the graphical quality, with my usual slight painterly effect. in various strengths. Gentle use of the Water colour filter giving it the biggest change.

Here I could have left it, but found it a little too flat, so I opened up Tex Box 2 and used:
Labyrinth Linear Light @ 29%
Muscatel soft Light @ 61%
Adding a 'vignette effect' and enriching.

As ever you can see the finished big version on my Flickr.

Summer Painterly Pack
36 large textures for only
$40

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box 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, perhaps a coffee break would be a good idea between downloads!

The Jetty

Welcome to the new Summer Season of Painterly Flypaper!
Before we had only been able to hint at new textures used, and frankly this was very frustrating, having new textures but not being able to give the game away about the new painterly theme!

So, for this first simple tutorial, I chose a picture from a roasting hot Thursday afternoon, at the famous port of Grau-du-Roi,
near Montpellier and on the edge of the famous Camargue.
On the horizon can be seen the strange pyramid-like white structures which are the French's answer to the Spanish 1960's/70's high rise holiday apartments. These are now very popular with Parisians and the Montpellier well-healed.

As it was on a high summer mid-afternoon I had to Shoot with my trusty polarized filter, so's not to lose the depth in those deep blue & green tones.

I've been told it has the quality of a Dutch Vermeer painting.
Naturally I'm happy with this!

Summer Painterly textures used:
Nimbus Clouds - Soft Light - @ 66%
Turtle Shell - Soft Light - @ 60% -
(Turtle shell removed from boats and people to keep the fresh whites)
A final 50% auto colour tweak and contrast after merging layers to finish!

This picture shows the image before the colour tweak, the final large version can now be seen along with a satellite map location on Flickr

Summer Painterly Pack
36 large textures for only
$40

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box 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, perhaps a coffee break would be a good idea between downloads!