STEP BY STEP ADD AND ADJUST TEXTURES

Blend a range of textures with your photos and adjust the effect to your liking

01 BLEND IN A TEXTURE

With the Textured Screen Pack on your computer, open your image in Photoshop CC (or use Tree.jpg in the Start Files folder). Go to File > Open and choose the first texture to use (e.g. Texture 07.jpg). When it’s on-screen, press Ctrl/cmd+a, then Ctrl/cmd+c, Ctrl/cmd+w and Ctrl/cmd+v to select, copy, close and paste it into the main image. If the texture needs rotating, press Ctrl/cmd+t to enter Free Transform, and drag the cursor outside the bounding box to rotate it 90º. Drag out the corner handles so the texture covers the whole image, then press Return to confirm. In the Layers Panel, click on Normal and choose a Blending Mode you like. We opted for Overlay here.

02 ADD ANOTHER TEXTURE INTO THE MIX

With the first texture in place, you may well have all you need, but if you want to further enhance it, open another texture (such as Texture 12.jpg) via File > Open and run through the same sequence of shortcuts as before to select, copy, close and paste it in. Browse through the choice of Blending Modes in the Layers Panel to assess the effects generated by the different options, and click on the one you want to use. (Here we chose Overlay again.) With two different textures working within the image, you can refine the intensity of each effect by clicking on that texture’s layer to make it active, and then adjusting the Opacity slider in the Layers Panel.

03 SELECTIVELY REDUCE THE EFFECT

To hold back the textured effect in particular areas within your image, select the texture layer you want to amend, then click on the Add Layer Mask icon. Select the Brush Tool and, after choosing a brush, reduce the Brush Opacity to around 40% in the Options bar. Set black as the colour (press D then X), adjust the brush size with the square bracket keys, and paint over the area where you want to tone down the effect.

If you make a mistake, press X to swap to white and paint again. Do this masking process on all the texture layers you have, and you can control how heavy or light you want the texture to be across your entire image with great precision.

04 CHANGE THE FEEL OF THE TEXTURES

To make a texture more or less ‘gritty’, select the layer concerned, then click the Adjustment Layer icon at the foot of the Layers Panel. Choose Curves from the resulting pop-up menu; in the Curves palette, clip the effect by clicking the left-most icon at the bottom of the palette. This makes the change only apply to that layer. Now change the shape of the curve by dragging the line to make the texture more or less intense. To add a colour cast to the texture, make a Hue/saturation Adjustment Layer, clip it (as you did with Curves above) and tick the Colorize box. Now move the Hue and Saturation sliders to create the colour wash you require.