Advanced Photoshop Tips | Adding Texture To A Photograph

© 2011 Wazari Wazir | A Portrait With Texture

Basically adding texture to a photograph is not really a difficult process, all you have to do is find a texture that you like and then choose a photograph that you want to add a texture into it and just blend it together in Photoshop, you can choose Overlay, Screen or Soft Light blending option under layer palette and you are done, it is that simple.

Sound that easy right? Same like taking picture, anybody who have a camera, be it iPhone camera, compact or DSLR can take picture, even a toddler can press a shutter button and take picture, the difference is whether the picture is good or not, it is still a photograph but the question is whether it is a good picture or bad picture, that’s a another story.

Like I said before, basically adding texture to a photograph is so simple, it is a matter of playing with different blending option but it took me almost a year to really understand what work and what won’t work with texture, just like black and white photography, no matter how good we are at editing black and white in Photoshop, we should realize that not all pictures will look great in black and white, some picture really made for colors and only certain picture that really work superbly in black and white.

In this post I just wanted to share just a few tips, this is not a tutorial for texture editing but just few tips from what I’ve learn base from my very own experiment and experience. What will work and what will not work.

For me, the best picture to add a photograph when it comes to a portrait is a portrait which have strong emotional feeling, sad looking face, crying, a portrait of a hardship, a portrait of and older person and something similar like that. When I do texture editing for portrait, I will look for a portrait which is in serious mood, I mean serious looking person, a face that have strong character and personally I don’t like top add a texture to a smiling face, If you look into my Texture set in my flickr, you will find very few portrait where the person is smiling, maybe it is just my taste but I really don’t think that a happy smiling looking face suitable for texture editing, our taste is different but this is just my personal preference.

Another thing that will make a texture editing look great is that, choose a portrait that have simple background, lean and simple background work best since the texture itself is  a “distraction”, you really don’t want to add another “distraction” to a photograph which in itself is fill with distracting element. Choose a simple photograph, clean background,avoid a photograph which have too many distraction.

You need the “clean background” for the texture to rest, I mean leave the clean and simple background for the texture to “fit in”. If you can see from the portrait of my son above, I leave the empty space on the left hand side of the photograph, so that the texture can fill in the empty space. If the background already have too many distracting element, this photograph will not work well with the texture. Basically the texture need some space in the photograph.

Another thing that I personally think will work great with texture editing is that, it work well if you desaturated the picture a bit, if the photograph have too many contrast, too colorful, then the texture work will not look great, there is nothing wrong adding texture to a bright colorful looking photograph but for me personally it won’t look great but if you think it look great to your eyes then by all mean, nobody have any right to say that you are wrong, it’s your artwork after all.

The reason why I think that the texture work look great with muted color or desaturated photograph is because normally we associate texture image or portrait with old photograph, maybe a 20 to 30 years old photograph where the colors is a bit fade, lack contrast and you can see texture or “crack” all over the place, we want to mimicked that kind of  look in our texture work and with super rich colorful photograph, usually it won’t look great but I’m not saying it it wrong, it just doesn’t look right.

When we do the editing, vary the brush size, the hardness of the brush and always pay attention to the opacity of the texture, too much texture is not good and usually I will never work with 100% texture opacity. When it comes to adding texture to a portrait, always pay close attention to the amount of texture on the face, we just want a very soft texture on the face, this is the tricky part actually and normally I will convert the Texture into Smart Object in Photoshop before I do my texture editing, so that I have a greater control to the amount of texture that I want to apply into the face.

Texture editing may look easy but to get it right, to get it blend well is not that easy, it take practice and a lot of experimenting to get it right. Personally for me texture editing is an art in itself, you really can’t run an Action or Preset and voilà, it is not that simple. If you want to get some inspiration, just take a look at old vintage photograph and you will get the idea.

Related Post : Mastering Textures