Texture Resources – So Many Choices! So Many Choices!

This week I decided to do another texture blog, this time emphasizing some great resources that I have been lucky enough to find. I really enjoy trying out different types of textures on different types of images, and it is interesting to see how the various authors of textures create them and use them. What a wonderful field of photography!

The beautiful Belarusian Church above was photographed from a moving car out in the countryside near Minsk. The sky was major flat but thanks to a gorgeous sky texture by Cheryl Tarrant at Distressed Textures, the finished image turned out totally enchanting. What a surprise! I had never used her textures, but I follow her on Facebook where she had a great offer to buy some of her textures. This image was processed using Topaz (see sidebar at my Tidbits Blog for website link) Detail 3 (Overall Light Detail II preset) and Black & White Effects (SJ-Painterly Effect preset). The The Artists Palette-Drama set Dream I texture was applied twice, once set to Linear Burn blend mode and on a duplicate layer, to Multiply blend mode.
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This little gerbera flower looked totally confused as to how it was supposed to look, but it really caught my eye because of that. I love this flower since it always looks like it is looking back at you. (See How to Turn a Brush into a Watercolor Brush, third image down for my take on this!) Kim Klassen uses very creative methods to make her textures – all very natural items and she pastes and paints and tears and pulls it all together to create absolutely incredible soft beautiful textures. I loved this video by Kim on Vimeo called The art of Texture Making – absolutely fascinating! She is a total master at setting up beautiful soft restful shots. By signing up for her newsletter, you get lots of beautiful textures to try out. Her website has several video tutorials on how she gets this great look, so if you want to just check out some new techniques, this is a great place. For a reasonable fee, you can get subscribe to her Test Kitchen and get even more video instructions and textures. So many of my images use at least one of her textures.
This image is an example of what I learned by using some of her textures and techniques. The basic tone and color adjustments were done in Lightroom following my basic RAW workflow (see How to Use Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) or Lightroom 4 Quickly). Then Topaz Detail using the Overall Detail Light II medium preset was applied. Topaz DeNoise 5 was applied setting the Overall Strength slider to .24. Next Kim’s beautiful Rue texture was added at normal blend mode and the flower painted out on a layer mask. Next her Revolution texture was added at Multiply blend mode and a layer opacity of 70%. Next text was added using Batik Regular font. To finish it off the contrast and color was corrected with adjustment layers. This was a pretty simple image to process since Kim’s textures made it look so pretty.
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Moving on to another of my favorite texture makers, and what a totally different look and feel to your images when using them! Melissa Gallo at Painted Textures does some of the most fantastic painted textures you will ever find. What I like most about her textures is that I can never tell what results I will get until I apply the it – sometimes you get some of the most unexpected results! I love the way these textures give your image that fantastic painted look – very vibrant and beautiful texture effects! Another thing that is really great is that she has a 2 for $5 every month where you can try out something new on your images and at a reasonable price! Love this. Her site has several videos on how to use her textures in your images also. Used my 60-mm macro lens at F/2.8 to create this soft flower effect for the beautiful pink dahlias I bought to plant in my front yard (that is if the brown bunny that also lives in my front yard does not eat them!). Very easy image to process. Added Painted Textures 2 for 5 Friday Set 2 Seafoam texture, rotated and flipped it, and added a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer clipped to the texture layer (ALT+Click between the layers to create a clipped layer). The Cyans Hue was changed to -143; Blues Hue was set to -180, Saturation to -62, and Lightness to +51; and Master Hue set to -44 – this changed to the turquoise colors to light pink in the texture. Next a layer mask was added to the texture layer and the flowers were lightly painted out. A composite was created on top (CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E) and Topaz Detail 3 was applied. (Here is what I applied: Applied Stylized Detail Collection -> Sunset I preset. Next went to Color and set Desaturated III and set Saturation Boost to -0.60. With Effect Brush set to Strength to 0.89, Brush Size 0.25, Hardness 1.00, Flow 1.00, Edge Aware 1.00, softly painted over the two flowers. The Overall Opacity slider was then set to 0.83.) A New Layer set to Overlay was created some of the focal lines were burned in (see my The Best Dodging and Burning Technique!) and the layer was set to 29% opacity. Next the text was added – in this case I used Kim Klassen‘s Dream brush but this could easily be done with a nice font. A layer style was added using a Stroke Effect at 3 pixels in a darker pink color; an Inner Glow Effect was used with the Blend Mode set to Normal, Size to 100 and a sampled medium pink color; and a Pattern Overlay added using my one of my free textures set to a scale of 295. (See SJ Impasto Smeary Flat – to convert to a pattern, open image in Photoshop and go to Edit -> Define Pattern – it will appear at the bottom of your pattern list.) Added a Levels Adjustment Layer and moved the midpoint right to 0.78 to bring back a little contrast and it is done. See my Tidbits Blog Painterly Red Berries for another example of her textures.
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Another one of my personal favorite texture makers are those made by French Kiss Collections by Leslie Nicole. She adds very artistic effects using several different painting media. Her watercolor textures are one of my favorites, but she also does a great job with acrylics and oils. Her colors are vivid, but have a little different feel from Melissa Gallo’s textures. Once again, lovely color and texture.This beautiful bromeliad plant is yet another image from the local grocery store.This image was first processed in Lightroom using the normal adjustments. Lightroom’s Color Presets Cross Process 1 was applied using The Fader set to 56%. (See my blog Great Free Plug-in for Lightroom – The Fader!) Stacked on top is French Kiss Solstice Collection‘s Zest texture set to Vivid Light blend mode. A layer mask was added and the plant was lightly painted back using a soft black brush set to 30% opacity. French Kiss Solstice Collection Ebullience set to Normal blend mode at 100% opacity was used. More painting on a layer mask was done before a Curves Adjustment Layer was clipped to the texture to add some contrast (ALT+Click between the layers to clip). A Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer was used to change the Yellows channel Saturation to +33 and clipped to the top layer also. A Levels Adjustment Layer was added on top to the whole image to increase the contrast just a little by moving the center tab to 1.03. See my Tidbits Blogs Checking Out French Kiss Textures and Hibiscus Beauty for other examples of her textures and overlays.
….. So here is a photo that uses three of my favorites texture groups, and I find I do this a lot in my images – that is what makes your image unique and interesting. These zinnias were treated with all kinds of things! I used David duChemin’s Milford Greens + Grad-.33 Lightroom preset. I love his  inexpensive set (see my 2012 Inexpensive Gifts for the Photoshop Lover on Your List blog – number 10 for link). Once in Photoshop Topaz Detail 3 was applied twice – once for sharpening, and once applying the Abstraction I preset and painting out areas to get the soft flower look in the background area. Distressed Textures The Artist’s Palette – Drama Tawny Skies texture set to Hard Light; next Kim Klassen’s Cloth & Paper Touch texture (one of my all-time favorite textures!) set to Multiply at 36% layer opacity; and finally another of my favorite texture groups – 2 Lil’ Owls Studio’s (see my Tidbits Blog sidebar for website link) Enchanted texture from the Workshop Bundle below set to Overlay at 45%. I love their Mosaic Textures – use them all the time but they have a whole lot of other interesting textures to choose from. I also got their Texture Workshop Ebook Bundle, which teaches you how to use textures using some different techniques and has some very nice textures supplied. (Here is link to one of the images that used a different Workshop texture and here is a Mosaic Texture image example.) Very nice website.
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I will list a few others that I have not discussed but I really enjoy their textures.

1.  Needless to say Shadowhouse Creations – he is brilliant and has absolutely some of my favorite textures and they are all free. This guy is fabulous for sharing his expertise and his textures.

2.  Flypaper Textures – another wonderful texture group that are once again gorgeous and have their own feel to them. Check them out!

3. Don’t want to forget Sarah Gardner – I learned a lot from her book Art Beyond the Lens. She also has a pdf magazine called Beyond the Camera that is always interesting. And of course her textures are great also.

4.  Lost and Taken Textures by Caleb Kimbrough is another free texture site (although donations are requeted) that has some  highly unusual textures – not always what you are looking for – but then you come across one that is so unique and beautiful! Here is a link to some textures I have used for years.

5. Check out Chasing Dreams Photography has some very nice textures. I am not as familiar with them but they appear to be very good.

6. Isabelle Lafrance Photography is another wonderful website chocked full of goodies and textures. It is another great texture resource and I have had the opportunity to use her textures and overlays a couple times – very lovely.

7. Florabella Collection has many textures besides her very famous actions to choose from. Definitely check them out.

8. Iron Owl Designs is one I just found out about and it looks like they have some great textures. This is a site I am hope to look at soon.

9. For some high-end priced textures, check Jesh de Rox site – he has gorgeous textures and images to see how they look applied!

10. Mark S. Johnson Photography has recently created some very nice textures that can be purchased on his website along with several nice blogs and videos on how to use textures in your artwork.

You can also find many flickr sites (check out The Golden Textures High Quality site for a good place to start) and deviantART (just do a search for textures) sites that offer some beautiful textures for free – just be sure to read how you may use the textures before placing your images all over the internet. There are so many beautiful textures out there. A great resource for finding new people creating textures is to follow Texture Photography Masters – the group, where many participants show some beautiful images and what textures they used. Also, don’t forget Russell Brown’s Paper Texture Panel Updated!– can direct it to your favorite textures to try out real fast!

I like that I have so many choices from so many wonderful texture vendors who have so many different ways of approaching and applying textures. I have learned so many different techniques and am still sorting out what works best for me and what kind of look I want to pursue. I hope I have been able to direct you to some new resources for getting the look you want. It is a lot of fun to try them all out! Have fun experimenting!…..Digital Lady Syd

Digital Lady Syd Related Blogs:
Using a Couple of My Textures
Tips for Flower Textures
Creating That Vintage Texture Feel
How To Create Unique Watercolor Background Texture
Creating a Healing Brush Background Texture
Just click the Texture Category on the right hand side for posts using textures to see more examples and links.
Check out my Tidbits Blog and click on the Textures Category for more examples and short blogs.