In digital scrapbooking one of the most important characteristics is texture; papers are boring and one-dimensional without it. Designers find their textures in all manner of places, but one universal source is from photographs, especially their own so there is no question of copyright later on. Almost any photograph will make a texture that you can use: the skill lies in manipulating that image to provide different textures and effects, even changing it so much that you would never guess what the original image had been!
Here is a photograph of some sage: it’s not a particularly good photo but I kept it because I thought I would be able to use it for something, like a texture or overlay. I’ve resized it to 12 x 12 inches at 300ppi and because it’s going to be changed around with effects it isn’t necessary to have a perfect, crisp image.
I use Adjust>Hue and Saturation>Hue/Saturation/Lightness to remove colour from the image: a greyscale texture like this will work without altering any paper colour too much. Check the Colourize box and set the values to 0.
I then duplicated the photo layer and changed the new layer to Overlay in the Layers Palette, which brings out the velvety texture of the leaves a little more. I merged the two layers using Layers>Merge>Merge Visible.
My next step was to use Adjust>Add/Remove Noise>Add Noise with a setting of Gaussian=45% followed by Adjust>Blur/Motion Blur with an Angle=199 and Strength=100. I followed this with Effects>Art Media Effects>Charcoal with Detail=100 and Opacity=80.
Now it’s time to try out the effect I have so far: I have added a new raster layer and filled it with a solid colour. I usually try out all the Blend Modes listed in the Layer Palette just to see what effect I get before I settle on one. This is with a Blend Mode=Multiply, as I love the rich green colour.
Here is what happens by duplicating the texture layer again, rotating it 90 degrees and changing the Blend Mode=Difference.
I then decided to make the green layer invisible and merge the two textured layers together again. By using a Blend Mode=Soft Light my texture is now smooth.
With another session of experimentation I used Effects>Texture Effects>Mosaic Glass, and left whatever settings I had last used and I loved how it gave a worn look to parts of the paper.
So, that’s four texture overlays from that one not very good picture of some sage, and I’m not really trying! I have used simple effects and not made many changes to settings: the best texture is one where layer upon layer of effects is added and they take time to create. There are many nondescript photographs that could make intriguing page textures, it’s all a matter of “try it and see”, also known as playing around In Paint Shop Pro!
You can download a PDF vesrion of this tutorial by CLICKING HERE
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