Lessons
Lesson Info
Where to Get Textures?
I'm not on artsy kind of person, typically, but I was getting a little tired of textures that I have in my folders. So, um, last week or the week before, knowing I was gonna come here, I just took I have a pad of paper where the paper itself has a bit of texture and all I did, I was looking my gradual. I've got some old black paint and I got some gold spray paint and I just did that and like, literally about a minute and 1/2 and then took a photograph of with my phone. And because our phones are getting to be better and better quality, I was able to now have that and some other ones. These are all just different ones that I created very quickly just by playing around with paint with dry brush is and things like that and spray spray paint. And I had no plan going in that I'm deliberately doing this because I know I ultimately want I don't but because I know in Photoshopped, even though I used red spray paint, it's not that hard and Photoshopped to make that blue. If I decide that's bett...
er but the texture and the combination of the different colors and they're see through nous. Those are all things that I was able to create very quickly. I did literally did like five or six and maybe a total of 20 minutes, and the worst part was just the smell of spray paint in the air. But other than that, you know, very quick and simple to do and again keeping in mind that these are all photos I took with my phone just because I was too lazy to go and get my better camera. Because I know for something like this. Normally, I don't want to scale things up. Like if I take a photograph of people or a building and I scale it larger, I know I will lose some sharpness. But when it's a texture, I'm not as worried because if I end up making it five times bigger, I'm still gonna blend it in with the background photo. So it's not like I'm worrying about who that doesn't look a sharp. Is it because it's not supposed to be sharp anyway? So that's why my phone has become an important tool now for grabbing textures when I'm just standing somewhere have been in a hotel, elevator and gun. That's really interesting. And people are looking at behind, like focusing on the back wall of the elevating. They're like, I don't know what he's doing, but, you know, meanwhile, they're taking selfies. I'm like, No, look at that would. It's really cool Now. There's also a nap. I'm not gonna demonstrate today, but it's worth looking into its on adobe app called Capture. And it's for both IPhone and Android. And it's really interesting, because in this one app, you can capture patterns that you can make into repeating patterns very easily. You can capture colors, so if you're looking at the color scheme of somewhere and go, I like to use those those same kind of color palette you can actually capture, and it turns into swatches you can use in your adobe app. It'll even dispose my mind. Take things that like a Lowell, for example, and actually vector rise thumb, so fusing problem like illustrator and you want Fechter heart. It's really pretty amazing, and it's it's a great tool to know that beyond just taking a photograph, you can also say that little area there if I made that into a pattern, almost like a colitis or those kaleidoscope of things used to look through and turn. It does that kind of thing, but automatically so it makes this seamless pattern you can then use in photo shop. So for the price, which is nothing, it's a great little tool. It incorporates right into your creative cloud library. So if you capture something on your phone using this capture after and you're already signed into your creative cloud account, by the time you step over to your laptop or your computer, it's already in your creative part of library. So that's just a nice added kind of bonus as we go. The other thing, which is new to photo shop that a lot of people miss, is this is the probably the last two versions of Creative of a CC like the very fun to say Photo Shop CC 2015.5. I'm so happy over say that anymore because they went from 2015.5 to which makes more logical sense. But anyhoo, the new dialogue box has always just been a place where you say I want this with this height, you know, pretty basic. But then they changed that This new new document dialog box And most people, I think, tend to look in this view and it's go. It remembers what I've recently done. That's kind of helpful, and you have like, presets. But then this second half here, where it says, like excuse me, photo print art illustrations So on. If you look in there, there's some actually some interesting, almost like templates where, for example, here's one that's called vintage photo effects, and it's just built in there. You open it up and it actually literally has a layer, says Insert your photo here. So if we look in, I think it's this one are illustration. So look at this one. Grunge paper textures. So I've already down the first time it takes a moment, cause it actually is just a preview, the actual after download, so you'd have to be connected Internet for this phase of it, but you'll look and see. It says your image here couldn't be much simpler. I think I'm going to rotated, though, so everyone turn your head sideways so it says, and then we take whatever photograph, drag it in there, just make sure it's down on this level and then free transform accordingly. So weaken. See our photo? That So now that's just whatever the last the setting it had. But look inside each one of these folders or groups, there's sub folders with more stuff inside, so something is turned on. But then other things aren't so. As you go through, you can just keep looking saying, Do I want 1/2 tone in It may be that No, I don't like that. So this could keep you occupied for I would say, a minute or two, you know, browsing through all the options, because it's crazy how much this is need paper if you want to look like folded papers and going actually adds, it looks like an old folded paper thing, all the different textures and then on top of that colors. So here's all the different colored overlays. And, of course, all of these, I really appreciate the very descriptive names of the colored overlay because I think one PM would be better than you know five PM I guess it makes sense, but but you turn him on off And of course, any time you see one of these, that means it's an adjustment layer of some kind. This case, Grady, it map, which means you can change it. So your opening Ah, copy. It's almost like this is a template. So when you first open it, it opens a document called Untitled One. So you know, you're not damaging so you can play around. You could delete, you can add you can change because the original template document stays untouched. So this means every single aspect. If I decide I want to see what it looked like with this grainy and map instead, I just change it. And then I changed the blend mode and I change. I mean, these are all just starting points. So instead of going and decided, well, I'm gonna find an old piece of paper, and I'm gonna take a photo of it. You could do that, too, but this is just an example of one of these sort of template documents that has all the stuff just built in. And I'm a big fan of anything that has either the word template or preset or something like that, because to me it's a great starting point. I might change it so much that no one else would recognize it to realize I use this template, but it got my ideas going and I went, Oh, I could do that But I might want to mask this part and add my thing on top of that and suddenly I've got something that's really unique and interesting in a much quicker way. So a template like this one, it's already done. So it has all these settings where you click on a layer, and it's already they've determined they think would be good if it was in this blend mode in this opacity, etcetera. So. But the point of it is you can, you know, tweak it any way you want. Now the other thing, which is kind of interesting, is the fact that in this to me is still. It kind of blows my mind a little bit that this is so easy. Adobe announced a couple of years ago the Dhobi stock, which is like this huge collection of stop stock photographs that you can actually search for right from within Photoshopped. So in the library's panel, there's a search dialog box and you type if you actually can spell properly texture. And it says we'll hear some for you And one of the interesting aspects of Adobe stock in this I really appreciate this part because everything in here you can download a free for position on Lee preview. That's watermarked. So if you're not 100% sure that this texture is gonna work for you, you can basically say I just want to have a quick preview. So now it's in my library. Aiken, drag it into here. I can resize to do whatever I want. It's gonna have that watermark on it. But for the purpose of testing it to see is this gonna work? You can do all these things that, depending on what functions you do to it, for example, if you change the blend mode or something else, if you decide, yes, that's exactly what I want. Instead of starting over again when you license the image, it just updates. So whatever you've done automatically stays there other stock photos, you'd have to download it and then go, OK, I write down. I did this this, that you don't have to redo it in this one. There's a couple of small exceptions, but for the most part, if you're doing kind of what I would call standard photo shop operations, it will make its best attempt to say I will incorporate all of those in Just update for you. Okay, you repeat the name of the template. Sorry, the temple is a template. It's in the new dialogue box under art illustrations called grunge paper textures, so you may have to scroll through a little bit. But you'll see there's all kinds of different ones in their half tones, etcetera. And depending on what creative cloud, um, membership you have, there's even another source you can go to find other templates for these ones that are built into the new the new dialogue banks. Okay, so Adobe stock has become an interesting source because of that ability to work with a preview image. And then, if you like it, just license it in an update, so you have to start all over again, so that's pretty cool.
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Ratings and Reviews
Beatriz Stollnitz
Great class for anyone looking to blend a photo with a texture for a creative effect. Dave discusses Blend If, smart objects, Apply Image and many other techniques that enable us to get the most out of Photoshop when adding texture to photos.
Laura D
Loved this class. Dave covered exactly what I needed to know to add textures, including a multitude of ways to make the texture more or less subtle. I learned a lot. You do need some Photoshop background to understand all the content.