A Bookstore Surprise, Free Textures, and Signs of Autumn :)

I passed this sign in Gloucester, Massachusetts and created this altered photograph with tons of texture and colorful mums!  (wait til the end of this post for some free textures which you can steal from me to do fun stuff in Photoshop, too.)

I had fun making this in Photoshop, it's not perfectly layered or lined up but I love the way it came out like the fun, orangey and vivid Autumn I imagined. I had to really brighten the colors because sadly, hurricane Irene from last month has ruined our change at colorful foliage here in Rhode Island. :(  So I used Mums instead of Leaves. :)

So, last week I was at the local bookstore, happily and caffeinatedly flipping through the latest issue of Somerset Life, when I did a double take near the end...Wait, isn't that my photograph? Yes! it is!  :)) (Big smiles and a dropped jaw in the bookstore didn't seem to faze anyone else, though. The cashier didn't really care either. sigh.) But here it is:

So that was exciting! If you're interested you can submit work to them, too- they are now accepting submissions for everything from photos to projects and jewelry and..well, check out their site above. Each issue lists items and ideas they're looking for in the back.  And finally..

Sunflower Field texture by Mary

Hunter's Beach texture by Mary

Two more free textures I made- feel free to download them here by opening in a new window in your browser or visit my flickr textures for more you can download. For the image at the top of my post I used some of the lighter brown textures mixed with bokeh, and then I used a hard brush in Photoshop with the brush tool to dodge out more bokeh around the top of the mums and bottom of the sign post.
happy Monday! :)

9 New Free Textures for you!

I made some more digital textures, which you can use in blending with your photos, digital scrapbooks, or any other digital creations. Download them here, or visit my Flickr set of textures to see these and more. Enjoy!  A few recent photo creations with textures first...

 You can selectively erase sections of texture after adding them as a second layer in Photoshop to give them a lighter touch. For example in the daisy photo below, I erased the section with the tall daisy to make it stand out.

 You can also dodge and burn the center and edges to give them vintage feel, and change the colors to your liking. If you like the grungy textures but you want them darker, you can burn them in, or go to Photoshop's "auto tone" feature under Image adjustment to automatically add some contrast.

Hunter's beach texture

Gray grunge bokeh texture

Denim grunge texture

Natural grunge texture

Natural grunge with vignette texture

Dappled blue texture

Lavender texture

Vintage Sepia bokeh texture

Tidepool bokeh texture

I enjoy making these, so if there are any that you like or want more of, let me know...which colors do you like to use in your work? Do you like darker textures or lighter ones? Which blending mode do you use the most? And what types of photos do you add texture to- nature, people, still lifes,  or landscapes?

(To download the full size, click on the ones you like below, open in new window, and maximize by clicking on it again. Right click and then save.)   :)))

TTV Texture used for Layering - First Attempts

Ok, so I'm learning to work with Photoshop to take advantage of some of the awesome free textures available on Flickr. I picked some files of varying quality and genre, and sat down to learn how to do it. I had used layers before but not used textures and not with my own photos. So, here are the results. All textures are the same: "dirt ttv 1038", courtesy of the talented Nesster.

This is a photo of a tropical bird which was immortalized at the Denison Pequotsepos Nature center in Mystic, CT. I had some shadows behind the bird, which did not look quite right, plus the whitish, blank background I thought would work well with TTV. I like it, but I'd like it more with a sky ttv background.

 

This is another piece I shot at the nature center, of a butterfly under glass. It's supposed to look distorted and old, so the texture works really nicely here, I think. I used the "darken" feature in the layer tool to bring through the color of the butterfly a bit more, since playing with the opacity under "normal" didn't do it justice.

This is an older file taken with a 6 megapixel digital point and shoot. It's of the San Francisco skyline under fog and behind clouds. It's poor quality, so I really played around with it, giving the clouds above a colored, hdr-effect, and then applying Nesster's texture. I like using landscape with this texture because it's believable that someone see this far away scene through a dirty and smeary lens. Or maybe that's just me. I like how the detail-less, one color skyline matches the ttv frame.

 

I reeeally love this one, although I took it as a screen shot- from a television commercial. I was testing my  Nikon d90 at the time, trying to see what kind of quality shot it would take from the tv, and playing with the automatic settings. I ended up liking it, so I kept it and used it here. I love the way the texture really matches the scene, I can imagine capturing a quiet moment like this with an old toy camera. Plus, the texture hides the screen shot's effects of electronic noise and strange color aberrations, so it comes out looking more like a normal photo. I imagine this is something my cats would do.....if I had a piano in my condo. 

I hope to try more work with textures this week, they're incredibly fun, and are helping me learn some of the features of Photoshop I wasn't using before. As I improve and learn what works, I may post some of them on Etsy as well.