Thanks to Pear Biter for allowing his image to be manipulated under Creative Commons www.flickr.com/photos/pearbiter/566128230/

After the last few posts on working with textures in Photoshop CS4, I thought I’d do some searching and share some links for free textures. I do think however, that one should go out an shoot their own texture files to create a unique image of your own vs. using someone else work.

29 Most Useful Texture Packs of 2008 - Has a great selection of links to earth tone and vintage style textures.

31 Most Colorful Collection Of High Quality Free Texture Packs - Another good site that did all the work for you, finding great textures.

Texture King - Currently has 337 free texture files.

40 Excellent Photoshop Tutorials for Textures and Backgrounds - A good source for creating your own textures.

CGTextures.com - This site is huge, but unfortunately it is a paysite, but worth checking out.

I played around with the Seattle image a bit more from this post, adding an image I was able to get through the NASA website. This is a gold mine for texture images and other than for advertising, they are in the public domain.

Check out the NASA gallery and start adding to your texture library.

Tonight I was giving CS4 a good workout and thought I’d work on some portrait images just for fun. These both came out a bit better than I expected and you’ll see in the second image, I added a gradient to neutralize the skin tones as well as some textures on the outer edges. I was also going for a more creamier feel to the skin. Unfortunatly the web image just doesn’t come out with the right tone as a large .PSD file does.

I did a bit more work on the first image above, with Edna, shaping her nose and mouth somewhat but not wanting to make it look unrealistic. I also tried to maintain the skintone and pores when working with the skin which is always a challenge. This work can be tedious and there really is no way around it other than having a great makeup artist and lighting to get it right.

I have been driving around my Macbook Pro with my new version of Photoshop CS4, trying to learn all the little nuances hidden under the hood. Somehow I got sidetracked and ended up at istockphoto.com looking at textures. Don’t ask me how, it just happens when one has a period of boredom, followed by flashes of inspiration and then some temporary forms of ADHD. Anyway, so I did a search on textures as I wanted to work with some layers in Photoshop and play around with some images I shot over the weekend in Seattle. Not having any textures at the ready, I found this one of a tuscan wall that I figured would work perfect. Yeah I had to pay for it, but I wanted it now and did not have my Europe images close by and the time to spend hours hunting for a texture. Besides I I started looking at my old Europe CD’s, I’d end up on some other tangent and never accomplish my goal , so I bought it.

Originally I was going to use and image of Post Alley by the Pike Place Market, but felt that the Seattle image would work a lot  better. In the upper left corner, you can see the original texture file as well as the Seattle photo I used.

So, let’s see step by step how I created this.

First, I opened the main file and since it is one I sell for stock, it was already perfectly edited. I then created an empty layer and brought the texture image into this new layer. Make sure you create a new layer and do not do a layer from background.

Now here is where the fun comes in. Since the new layer will be blocking out the background image of the city, we need to adjust the opacity. As you can see in the above image, we click on layer 2, as highlighted in blue. You’ll notice a few dialogue box options we can choose. First, there is the opacity option, which allows us to bring the background image back as we adjust it towards zero. In this case, I set it to 86. Being that the Layer 2 image is a brown tone, it also tone’s the over all image which i was looking for. I then adjusted the fill to 55%. Fill is a different adjustment than opacity, as I understand it and someone correct me if I am wrong,  it reduces only certain pixels, where as opacity adjusts the whole layer.

Next and this is probably the most important thing to do, I started playing with light on layer 2. This is where you can get some really cool effects, but the one I chose was Hard Light. This gave me the perfect combination that I was looking for to create an image that looked both like an old photograph and had the potential, to maybe even look like a painting.

I then created another new layer and this time I used a gradient fill as you can see in the above example. The fill I chose was the third one over, (Red Box). This is another area you can experiment with. Different fills will give it different colors. On this layer I left light to normal, fill at 60% and opacity at 63%.

I then went to the original background copy and brought out some of the whites on the Mt. Rainier and the Space Needle.

And that’s it! This is an easy way to change images that may have been throwaways or bad lighting.

When you are out shooting or just riding the bus to work, if you have a good point and shoot start taking photos of textures on walls, floors, even old books and magazines. Build up your portfolio of textures and then just start playing in Photoshop. The great thing is you can also save your .PSD file as a template and just replace the background image with another and all your layer settings will allow you to change other images fast and easy.

For more inspiration, check out Nitsa’s nonphotography blog, she’s the queen of this technique.

Photographer Bill Simone steps through some of his workflow in creating the above image. Though I think HDR can be a bit overdone and has become the rage for the past two years or so, but Bill really created a beautiful image without overdoing it. Also check out his Boxer post. This was a great composite image, taking you step by step through the process.

Seeing work like this convinces me I need to use more post processing. I have always been a minimalist when it comes to working my images, because I think the job needs to get done in the camera and not on the desktop. I also fought moving to digital from film and going back to film would be pretty tough at this point. My CS4 upgrade arrives next week, so I guess I’ll need to get to work and get some help from the masters like Bill Simone.

The Green Planet

This one will be very popular with everyone talking about going green. Download Link

Skateboard Template

This is probably one of the coolest templates I have run across. For those of you who want to design your own skateboard layouts, this will be a perfect template for you. Download Link

PSD Demonstration

Some of the best ways to learn a program is to dissect what others have done. This .PSD demonstration gives you all the layers of the image, so you can see how it was constructed. Files like this are a great way to learn Photoshop.  Download Link

Stalker Pass

These crack me up, not much more to say. Download Here and Here

ID Badge Template

This is probably the best ID Template file I have run across. Download also includes the font files. Download Link

Shout Bubble Templates

This little shouts template is easy to use. Just open  and edit the text and your done. No fuss no muss.  Download Link

Postage Stamp Template

Everything is on a separate layer and the text can be edited as well. Download Link

DVD Case Templates

You only need Photoshop CS/CS2/CS3 to open it and tweak the layers. You can fully customize the artwork. If you want to change the box color, look on the “dvd case” group and tweak them with Hue/Saturation. Download Link

And another from the same author Download Link

Eye Candy

This little “Eye Candy” template is pretty cool. I haven’t taken the time to edit this into a model portrait, but it could be a pretty interesting effect. Download Link

IPhone Template

I am an iphone freak and love the fact that I can have a computer at the tip of my fingertips at all times. My friend Michael, is also a Apple advocate, so I’m going to have to think of a way to photoshop him into this template.  Download Link

Film Frame

Use your creativity with this one for creating a template for a photo gallery to a possible movie poster.  Download Link

iPhone Icons

Some more fun working with the iPhone, iPhone apps icons in PSD Format. Download Link

Fantasy PSD

Not sure what else to call this, so fantasy seems appropriate. I can picture things like flying cats and dogs with a tornado thrown into this template. I think this one has a lot of latitude to work with. Download Link

Web 2.0 badges

Simple files that are easy to edit. You may get a missing font error when you open these, but just use your own system fonts to edit the badges. Download Link

]]> http://www.pixebian.com/archives/572/feed http://www.pixebian.com/archives/552 http://www.pixebian.com/archives/552#comments Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:13:09 +0000 Terry http://www.pixebian.com/?p=552

The other day I was talking to a friend about photography and was trying to explain the concept of how depth of field works and how an aperture controls DOF. He was asking me how to make image backgrounds fuzzy in Photoshop, he didn’t understand I had done it in camera. With our automatic cameras, I understand people really become lazy and do not understand how changing a shutter speed or aperture settings can change their photos. I went over to one of my favorite websites, Deviantart.com and shared a tutorial I had bookmarked a while back, to explain the concept. I know for me personally, I shoot 95% of my work in aperture priority mode. So for me, I think it is important for others to understand this concept.

Also check out this link for many more excellent tutorials. They have done a great job of clearly explaining each concept from Macro Photography to High Contrast Black n’ White

This is probably my favorite Photoshop action yet. Take a B&W image and create a night vision photo in Photoshop, in less than a minute. This is an easy to run action that introduces you to Lighting Effects, Adding Noise and working with Grain. Just open an image and run the action and it automatically creates a Night Vision image for you. Images below are actual samples created from this Night Vision Action in less than 10 seconds.

Click for immediate download and a simple donation to help me maintain this site.

Sample Images using Terry Divyak's Photoshop Night Vision Action

I get a ton of traffic here, so thanks for checking out the blog if you are a regular visitor. I thought I would post a reminder that you can subscribe via feedburner to be up to date on the stories I post. It takes about 15 seconds and if you use my.yahoo.com, posts can become part of your  front page, just like other news stories.

Two hundred plus visitors a day has been a nice surprise for such a young blog, so it will make me work even harder to bring everyone relevant content like PS tutorials and photos from 200+ models I have worked with.

I’m also debating about adding another feature, a behind the scenes look at building a photography based business which I am in the process of doing. If you feel this would be of interest, add a comment.

For a tutorial in Photoshop, on how to create the feed design, Click here