I love making beautifully dreamy images out of regular shots. When I use textures, my photographs begin to look the way I’m seeing them in my head as I shoot them. I want my images to look like a memory—something that harkens to something in the recesses of the viewer’s mind and reminds them of something good, magical and heartwarming.
One of the best ways to get that dreamy and nostalgic look on a photograph is to use textures. I’ve been working with them now for seven years and have built up quite an arsenal of go-to favorites that give me exactly what I want. In recent months, I’ve started releasing these textures in variety packs for other artists, photographers and designers to use to inspire their own creative works.
This past week, I’ve worked on revamping and expanding my texture variety packs, and I’m happy to announce that they’ve been released and are ready for purchase.
Even hard metal textures like the ones in my variety pack Metal Shop, can produce soft and dreamy results. Hard to believe isn’t it?
I’ve been amazed at what I’ve discovered in my years of experimenting. I’ve found that hard stone and rock textures can create a soft pastel drawing look. The results often make it difficult to discern whether the photograph is really a photograph anymore or if it was hand-drawn. I’ve had people ask me before “Is that a drawing, a painting or a photograph?”.
The fun thing is that using textures doesn’t have to be difficult as long as I’m using any photo editing software that lets me work with layers. I think of the texture layer as slightly transparent tissue paper that I lay over the top of my photograph—like vellum. Then I reduce the opacity of the texture layer, so I can see the photograph underneath… and the magic begins.
For more in depth instruction on how to work with textures, you may want to visit my texture tutorials by clicking here.