15 Aug 2012

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 :-)



14 Aug 2012

Settled . . . . . .

Well . . .we've moved countries,houses,flown over to the UK with the dog in the hold of the plane and we're at last settled . . .I can breathe a huge sigh of relief and look forward to getting back into a routine.

It was all ok actually and everything went to schedule except the telephone and internet . . .when the man came to connect us there was no cable in the ducting so we had top wait a few more weeks for this to be done but all is finished now.

I'm going to redesign the blog and start to included little tips I've found useful when I use textures . . .quite a few people have asked if I would do this . . . so I'll give it a go. If you've got any questions about how I do things I'm very happy to share with you.

Ok . . .see you all soon . . . . big happy sigh . .:-)

Oh and I couldn't go without sharing one of my recent pieces with you could I . . .

                                                                                    "Lily Pond" (textures by French Kiss Textures)
Love . . .xxx