Combining Textures with Photographs a Tutorial with Photoshop CS 4

Before Texture

The best thing about textures is that it can create a whole different mood to your images. You can create your own textures using any digital image manipulation program, you can even capture your own or you can get it from various sources. Flickr for instance there is this very talented texture designer called skeletalmess you can get very high quality textures from his flickr photostream here. Okay we are done with introduction now the step by step tutorial.

Step 1: You will need a main image and one or more textures of your choice. Image above shows 1 main image and 1 texture for this tutorial. Open the main image in Photoshop and proceed with step 2 below.

Step 2: Once you have opened your main image in photoshop you will now need to create a new layer by going to Layer -> New -> Layer (as shown above) or on a PC shortcut key Shift+Ctrl+N

Step 3: Give you layer a name e.g. Texture and ensure the setting are the same as above. Once you press the "OK" button you will be able to see the newly created layer in the Layers tab as shown below.

Step 4: Proceed with opening the texture in Photoshop as well. As shown below you will now have two tabs. One tab represents your main image while the other is the newly opened texture image.

Step 5: You will now need to copy the texture by using the marquee tool to select the texture and going to Edit -> Copy. As shown below. Reason for this step is you want to copy this texture onto your earlier created black texture layer.

Step 6: After you have copied you can close the texture tab and paste the copied texture onto your earlier created layer as shown below. Make sure you selected the layer which you have created before pasting it in.

Step 7: You are almost done. This is where the creative process of your mind takes precedence. Play around with the opacity to influence the texture effect on the main image.

Step 8: You can also experiment with different filters as shown below. Each would have a different effect on your image.

Step 9: Once you have done you will need to flatten the layers and save the file. You can do this by right clicking on any of the layers and select flatten image. Please see below for an example.

Step 10: The final result below.

I do hope you have enjoyed the tutorial. Please don't forget to leave a comment if you find this useful or if you feel its unclear.