TECHNIQUE: Creating Textured Papers from a Photograph

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TECHNIQUE: Creating Textured Papers from a Photograph
By Stacey Fox Myers 2005
Sep 27, 2006, 01:09

There are lots of ways to create textured background papers. You have probably used the Texturizer in Photoshop Elements or even tried your hand at using brushes to add texture to your papers. Another great method is to use a photo with an interesting texture of its own to add depth to your digital creation.
This technique depends on finding a good texture photo. Forget about those great family snapshots or even most of the scenic views you captured on your last vacation. Find a close up photo of rocks, bark, plants, walkways or any thing that has an interesting pattern or texture to it. One of my favorite texture photos is of lichen or maybe it’s moss growing on a boulder along a local hiking trail. You can use the same photo with this technique and get different results each time just depending on how you manipulate the texture.
1. Create a new document (CRTL+N) the size of your finished background paper at a resolution of 300 dpi.
2. Open your texture photo in PSE.

3. With the move tool active, click and drag your texture photo into the new document. Most likely your texture photo will be smaller than your paper size. Don’t worry we will fix that.

4. Stretch the texture photo to match the document size by grabbing the corners of the photo and dragging them to the corners of the document. This does distort the aspect ratio of the texture photo some. For most photos this distortion will not matter. If you are using a very geometric texture like a brick walkway and do not want to distort your image, resize the texture photo using CTRL+T with the chain icon clicked. After resizing this way your texture layer will match either the height or width of the paper and then extend beyond the viewable area of the paper.

5. Desaturate the texture layer (CLRT+SHIFT+U).
6. Now it’s time to play with the contrast, brightness or levels to adjust how prominent the resulting texture will be. In the Enhance> Adjust Lighting pull down menu, select Brightness/Contrast and play with the sliders until you like the amount of contrast in texture layer.

7. Click on the magic wand in the toolbox. Make sure that the selection mode is set to Add to Selection and that contiguous is NOT checked. The tolerance should be somewhere between 20 – 40.

Click on a light portion of the texture layer and delete it.

Turning off the background layer may make it easier to see how much of the original texture was deleted.

8. To soften the jagged edges created by the magic wand selection, blur the texture layer. Go to Filter> Blur> Gaussian Blur… and specify a small radius between 1-5 pixels.

9. Use the Smudge Stick filter to transform your photo into more of texture. Filter> Artistic> Smudge Stick… Here are the settings that I used but play with the sliders to find an effect you like.

10. Use the Motion Blur to further soften the texture. Filter> Blur> Motion Blur… Adjust the distance setting until you achieve a nice effect. Typically distances of 100 – 300 pixels work well. Just don’t blur the texture to the point it is really indistinct.

11. Now create a new layer (CRTL+SHIFT+N) and move it beneath the texture layer in the layer palette.

12. Fill the new layer with the basic color you want your paper to be.

13. Try out different Blend modes on the texture layer until you find one that you like. You can also soften the affect of the blend mode by lowering the opacity of the texture layer. Try duplicating the texture layer and rotating it 90°. Try layering it over a simple striped or patterned background. Now is the time to experiment and see how you like using your newly created texture.
Texture layer with blending mode set as overlay

Texture layer with blending mode set as color burn

Two texture layers with blending modes set as overlay

Another example of two texture layers with blending modes set as
Overlay

Striped pattern under two texture layers with blending modes set as
overlay