Flypaper Texture Tutorial!

Oh my, I have been so busy with everything I haven't posted in some time. I have a pile of stuff sitting here, waiting to be finished and posted and I just need to get my rear in gear. My husband says I live in the State of Exhaustion and is that ever true, especially being a full-time mom to a 2 and 4 year old! I need to post some pictures of the dozen little chicks our hen Blackie hatched last week. They are so cute. The boys and I held many of the eggs as the little chicks came out. It was amazing and something the boys will always remember. Anyway, we have been having a great time here fishing, playing outside, and hanging out with loved ones and not enough time blogging. ;-)

In my continuing quest to to find beautiful textures, I know I have directed my readers to the Flickr photostream of Paul Grand and Jill. They both have amazing images and I have featured their free textures on several of my tutorials here on CoffeeShop.

Well, you can imagine how excited I was when Paul emailed me and told me that they started their own website, Flypaper Textures, where they are selling an amazing texture pack and also posting step-by-step texturing tutorials. Paul and Jill are offering a $5 discount on their texture pack for all of my readers, just enter "flypaper" when you order. This discount is good until next Friday, Oct. 9th.

I love promoting sites like Flypaper Textures. Paul and Jill have been providing amazing textures and tutorials for free on Flickr for quite some time, and I love to see them finally make a little money from all of their hard work and incredible generosity. Even if you don't want to buy any textures, you can read the Flypaper tutorials and apply their notes using your own textures and images.

I have a Flypaper texture pack sitting right here on my desktop, begging me to find a few minutes to play. There are 25 beautiful high resolution textures, including bokeh and vintage fabrics. I seriously can't wait to use these textures and will be posting some of my results in the next day or two.

Here is a little tutorial on using textures that Paul and Jill sent my way. For the Photoshop Element users out there, you can use Levels instead of Curves and adjust the RGB levels using the drop-down menu. Please read it and then check out their site, Flypaper Textures, to read more tutorials and check out their texture pack (and use your flypaper discount code if you decide to purchase them).

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In this first tutorial of what we hope will be a continuing series, I'll show you how to easily transform a photo by adding our Flypaper Textures.

Before:



After:

The original photo is nice enough,
 but I thought texture would add more depth and interest.
First thing to do is duplicate your background.
I opened my Flypaper Texture folder and decided that pompeii stucco might be the best one to try first. Choosing which texture goes with each photo is something you learn with practice and experience as texturing is not a "one size fit's all" kind of thing.

Open the texture in photoshop (or your editing programme) then with the move tool selected drag it from the layers palette on top of your image. It doesn't matter if the texture is a different size or shape from your photo, you just resize to fit by using the drag handles on the corners.

Once your texture is covering your image, have a play with the blending modes and opacities.

Here is my texture at Soft light blending mode and 100% opacity

It looks okay but lacks depth, so I had a play with several different textures, you'll find when you're using texture that your delete button will be your best friend as you try out combinations.

Anyway, I finally hit upon using our Bruised Saffron texture at multiply and 37%

Then another layer of Pompeii Stucco at soft light 37%

Almost done, but the colours need a bit of a tweak. So I added an curves adjustment layer by clicking on "Create new fill or adjustment layer" button at the bottom of your layers pallete and selecting curves from the drop down list.
Once the dialogue box opens I played with red, green and blue curves until I got the tone I wanted. A little goes a long way with curves so it pays to be gentle.

And voila! We're done!

Of course with different texture choices and opacities it would be quite a different photo, so just treat this is a guide.

Any questions or suggestions for future tutorials, drop us a line, or leave a comment.