Texture tips
QIn a recent upgrade of Lightroom, Adobe introduced a Texture slider. Is it any use? Caroline Audley
AI’ve had a play with the new slider, Caroline, and I think it’s quite useful. I think its name is slightly confusing because it sounds like it is actually adding a texture, like an overlay, but that isn’t what it does. Instead, it enhances or reduces detail in a more natural way than some of the other controls that have been used in the past, such as Clarity and Sharpening.
Although you can use Texture universally across an image, I think it’s generally best used in a targeted way via the Radial Filter, the Graduated Filter or an Adjustment Brush. As with any of the changes you can make in Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw, it still pays to be relatively subtle with the Texture slider. Overdo it, and the increase or decrease in detail might make the image look unnatural.
Texture is quite handy on a portrait, where you want to smooth out skin for a more flattering look. (See the tutorial on page 78.) In this case you’d take the slider left to reduce detail, and this is what I have done in the portrait image. I’ve painted over the skin with an Adjustment Brush and taken the Texture slider to -40. It hasn’t removed all the skin texture (which looks wrong to my eye anyway), but it has softened it enough.
On the image of the eagle, I’ve applied Texture at +40 to improve the feather details on the head and neck of the eagle,
but I have avoided adding it to the background grasses: I don’t want to increase their detail or they could pull attention away from the bird.