Develop your visual style with texture screens

Use your free texture screen pack with layers and masks to create artistic images in Photoshop CC

Even though texture screens involve blending two or more images together, they can still be considered as a very traditional technique. Their use emerged in the early days of film: back then, the texture was placed with the negative under the enlarger lamp, giving a blend of the two on the resulting print.

With digital imaging, the concept is much the same, but the process is far more controllable and offers a lot more scope, as you can blend the images together in far more ways and hold back the textured effect wherever you like.

As a method of developing a visual style, the use of texture screens can give a real consistency to the way a set of pictures look. You can leave the textures in place in your Photoshop layers, and swiftly replace the base picture with another to generate the same treatment.

1 Blend in the first texture Copy the Texture Screen Pack to your hard drive. Open your image into Photoshop CC (or practise with Boxer.jpg), then open a texture screen you want to use. (I chose Texture Screen 02.) Press Ctrl/Cmd+A, Ctrl/Cmd+C, Ctrl/Cmd+W, Ctrl/Cmd+V to select, copy, close and paste it into the main pic. If your texture is not in the same orientation as the picture, press Ctrl/Cmd+T to enter Free Transform mode, then Shift-drag the cursor outside the bounding box to rotate it through 90º. Drag out the handles so the texture fully covers the image, then press Return to confirm the changes. In the Layers panel, try different Blending Modes until you see one that works well with the picture. I went for Divide here. 2 Add a second texture Open another texture you’d like to try (I used Texture Screen 23), and run through the same sequence of shortcuts from step 1 to select, copy, close and paste it in. Check the effects created by the different Blending Modes once more, and click on the one you like. (I chose Overlay in this instance.) With two different textures blending with the base picture in different ways, it’s now time to control the effect created, and decide where you leave it, and where you reduce or remove it. The process is all done with Layer Masks, so click on the Add Layer Mask icon at the foot of the Layers panel to attach one to the active layer. Now click on the other texture layer to make it active, and add a mask to that, too. 3 Control the texture effect To reduce or remove the effect in particular areas, decide where you want to remove it, then switch the texture layers on and off with the eye icon to determine which one needs to be amended. Once you’ve done this, make sure the mask in question is active by clicking on it, then select the Brush Tool (B). Choose a suitable brush from the Brush preset picker. (I used Spatter.) Reduce the Brush Opacity to around 50%. Set black as the foreground colour, adjust the brush size and click on the area in question. I toned down the paint texture on the model’s face; on the other mask, I removed the stone texture from her face, arms and torso, leaving it solely on the background. 4 Add a colour wash Because the stone texture has been ‘masked out’ on the subject and is only visible on the backdrop, it can be further enhanced with a colour wash. To add one, click on the very top layer, then click on the Adjustment Layer icon. Select Hue/Saturation from the list; in the Hue/Sat palette, click the Clip Layer icon to make the change apply solely to the clipped layer, and not to all the others in the stack. Now tick the Colorize box and move the Hue and Saturation sliders to mix up a treatment of the background that complements the subject. I used a Hue of 200 and a Saturation of 40 to match the model’s clothing and keep the colour palette of the image simple, but you can go for any colour you like.