Smoothing out textures . . .

On the face of it this seems an odd thing to want to do but when I mentioned this tip on my Facebook page Teresa Pople Photography somebody asked me if I could give instructions . . .so this is for you Kathy and anyone else who may be interested.

This is the original shot on which I did the preliminary work. I always shoot in Raw so I made the exposure adjustments I wanted to, sharpened the areas of the photo I wanted to enhance and then started to apply the texture.

I find it's quite hit and miss deciding which texture to use, sometimes a certain colour is what I want and I go with that but at other times I just experiment and may open 4 or 5 different textures before I get something I can work with.

I never feel that I have to complete a layer before moving on to the next one and  usually only do a bit of work on the first layer before I duplicate the texture and try a different blend mode, I like to quickly build the image before refining it. Each layer can be worked on as and when you want and  you can jump around the different layers masking and  revealing a little here and a little there . . .I find it difficult if not almost impossible to finish with one layer before I start another.

Here's the layers panel for this image

So . .. I reached a stage where I wanted to intensify the colour but not intensify the texture . . .and this is one of the snags with using multiple layers of texture . . .it can become too texturised.
 I found the effect I wanted which was linear burn blend mode at 45% and then blurred the texture using the gaussian blur filter. This gave me what I was looking for.
To do this simply click on the particular layer of texture you want to blur, select filter . .gaussian blur and decide how much of a blur you want . . .check the preview button and click ok. If you decide you then don't like it just undo. It's that simple and can produce some beautifully creamy effects.

I hope this was helpful . .if anyone wants any further info just let me know.

Love xx :-)