I say this is kinda of a tutorial because I kinda suck at writing tutorials and well, explaining things in general. With the upcoming launch of our creative tool kit for digital post processing your images I think it might be necessary (or at the very least nice) to have some how-to on well how to use the tools in the kit. I want to make it clear here that there's only a bajillion and one ways to work in Photoshop, this is one way. I am open to feedback and requests and any pointers and of course if you would like to write a tutorial for the Blahg I am pretty sure that I won't object. Our kit will have larger size textures of course, I made these as free 5" x 5" squares because I thought it would be easy if you just wanted to do a quickie on a blog image or just to play around with. When we launch I also promise to have perfected my tute skills so you may actually be able to follow me.
I found the 'original' image on a free photo stock site. It's cute but well it's nothing to write home about. I am sure you, like myself have collected a lot of snaps that are just sort of hanging out on your hard drive because they bring happy memories but aren't 'hey mom look what I did worthy'. Right? I think I have a bunch just like this. The sky is sort of not a real special blue but not too dark or light. I really wanted to show you the type of photo and colors that work best with the 'grass' colored textured square to achieve a nice, vintage aqua sky. That's where I am pulling my hair out with other texture sets, PLEASE tell me what kind of images will look good with your texture, give me large enough examples that I don't have to take out the Hubble or whatever to see. I really would love to see MORE 'before and afters' if you are selling textures (or actions/presets) because I am so easily persuaded that I probably would buy. Okay, enough of my rant. This 'tute' (using the term loosely) assumes you are familiar with Photoshop/Photoshop Elements.
This type of photo (color wise, with lot's of blue sky) looks fab when paired with the Souvenir Foto textured square in 'grass'.
- In Photoshop/PSE place the texture above the photo in the layers palette.
- Once you have the texture on top of the image go to the layer blending modes and choose "overlay'. I set this to 100% opacity, you could lower this setting of course but I wanted a beautiful aqua sky a sort of cross processed look. I added a layer mask to take the texture off the birds but I don't wanna go into masks here today that's a whole 'nother can of worms/tute but because I love you here's a tute from someone more competent than myself.
- I liked the look so I stopped there and cmd 'e' (Mac) ctrl 'e' on PC to merge layers and I was done with that one.
For the second sample I did the first two steps as outlined above, once I got to the super saturated aqua:
- I added a hue/saturation adjustment layer above the texture (it's that half black/white circle at the bottom of your layers palette, here's a shot from another tute)
- I slid the saturation layer to the left about mid way to take away some of that crazy color.
- I then added another adjustment layer but this one was called 'photo filter', I chose 'deep yellow. As you can see from the last image it made the blues more green and the yellow on the birdies is a little more pronounced. The color is very muted because of that nice slide to the left on the saturation slider. It makes for a totally different look than the first sample and I like them both ways and probably could keep going if I didn't need to get back to work.
Here's a color chart for the texture download, I hope this makes sense and you can have fun right away!
