Photo Challenge - Layering Textures

It’s time for A Personal Photo Challenge! “Layering Textures” is the theme this month. And I am sharing two images with you today that have been transformed with textured layers.

I have dabbled with applying textures for the past few years and find that it is a great technique to add a little extra zip to a photo. My digital inventory includes a couple hundred different texture files, and interesting new ones get added on a regular basis.

We spent a couple of days on our Montana trip last year cruising through the Flathead Valley area near Kalispell, Montana, on the hunt for great old barns. I spotted this picturesque scene of tall pines and was intrigued by the contrast of the freshly cut wheat field and the mountain backdrop. You can even tell which way the prevailing wind blows by the slant of the trees!

To make the composition more interesting, I would have loved for the sky to include some nice puffy clouds. But traveling photographers have to take make the most of the conditions that Mother Nature dishes out. With an uninteresting sky, this image was good a candidate for a texture layer.

I wanted a canvas type of texture and couldn’t find a suitable one in my digital inventory, so I created one in Photoshop. I added this texture to the entire image with a soft light blend mode and opacity set at 80.

And here is the final result.

When we were wandering around downtown Kalispell, Montana, we found a beautiful old church. I composed one photo with a mature spruce tree in the foreground of the steeple. Though it was about high noon on a sunny August day, I planned to transform the image into a nighttime scene, suitable for the Christmas season. Yeah, I’m wacky like that!

This is another example of a blah blue sky that could use a little help. I used two texture files in my transformation, stacking one on top of the other. The first texture is a dreamy blue haze (from Lost and Taken), and it was applied with a multiply blend mode at 83% opacity.

And the other one is a dark, starry night texture (sorry, I don’t recall the source). I applied this with a hard light blend mode at 100% opacity.

I spent some time masking off (i.e., removing) these textures on the tree and the church steeple. And below is the new “Christmas” version of the image. It turned out just as I imagined it on that summer day in Montana!

Now that you’ve seen my photos and read my post, I hope you will visit A Personal Photo Challenge blog and check out the creative efforts of other participants. Thank you so much!