Photomanipulation: Exploring texture

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Deviation Actions

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Texture: We love it!


If there's one thing a lot of photomanipulators love, it's texture, glorious texture! Texture can change your entire image and make it or break it. In our community, it is frequently used for creating a "dark" effect, but it can be used to create or enhance absolutely any theme you can dream up. I wanted to share some brilliant examples of art that use textures well. I also want to provide some tips of things I've learned and direct you to some tutorials. 

Let's get started!

Brilliant and inspiring


fire by greenfeed
High Priestess Water by JenaDellaGrottaglia
L'Etrangere by emilieleger
The egg thief by patriciabrennan


Tips for success


:bulletpink: Use textures to highlight positive assets of the manipulation; don't use them to try to cover flaws of poor blending or cropping.

:bulletpink: It's all about blending. Instead of using the eraser brush, try layer masks and gradients to help blend textures together or blend them into the other stock you are using. Consider using different shaped brushes with your masks. Blending and transitions should be smooth. 

:bulletpink: Don't be afraid to use more than one texture on a single image. You can achieve endless possibilities by working with multiple textures and changing opacity, hue, blending mode, and more on each texture layer. Also, each texture doesn't need to be over the entire deviation; you can experiment with bits and pieces over different parts of the deviation.  

:bulletpink: Other basics of photomanipulation still apply. Working with textures, you still need to be concerned about light and color, blending, and composition (where is the eye led and why?). 

:bulletpink: Like anything else, the easiest way to learn textures is to read some tutorials about them or work with someone who uses them well and then experiment to make the techniques your own.


Tutorials



There are many, many texture tutorials out there, but in these are some that, in my opinion, are among the best and easiest to follow.

Best wishes! :blowkiss:

Jade :dalove:



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SweetButtermilk's avatar
I love textures, but I don't use them enough. Good article. ^.^