I’ve been playing a lot with textures lately. It’s something I just recently learned how to do and its been doing a lot to enhance my images and bring out more of my creativity. Once I got it down it doesn’t take long to do and it can really help an image with a less than pleasing background.

The image you’re looking at above was enhanced with a texture I got from Joel Olives Photography. There’s many sources for textures all over the web, some free, some you pay for. I use Joel’s because they are very high quality and I get the look I want very quickly. The original is below.

I didn’t like the background color much at all. This was straight out of the camera with the aperture set to f5.6. I did the best I could to get an attractive green background behind the flower, but the color to me came out in what looked like to me a sickly green.

When I’m faced with a situation like this, I look through my collection of textures to find one that seems most suitable. I look for one that has a color that will either match the existing background in a better shade, or one that  will blend in well with it.

In this case I picked one with a darker shade of green, since I felt the original was too light. I also look at the texture itself. Sometimes I want it to be grungy, other times I want something more subtle.

Once I’ve decided on the texture, adding it is very easy. There’s different ways to do it, but the way I do it goes like this:

1. In Photoshop or Photoshop Elements I go to File>Place. This opens a dialogue that allows me to navigate to the texture I want to use. I click on the “Open” button.

2. The texture will then be superimposed over my original image on its own layer. I right click on the layer and in Elements click on “Simplify layer”, or in Photoshop “Rasterize Layer”. I need to do this to be able to add a layer mask if necessary.

3. I stretch out the texture to fit over my image the way I want using the mouse while holding down the left button. There is no need for any special tool to do this.

4. When it’s where I want it I either click on the green checkmark below the image if I’m using Elements. If I’m in Photoshop, I select the “Move” tool and click on the “Place” button that appears.

5. In the layers panel I go to the blending modes and usually select “Soft Light”. “Overlay” and “Multiply” can be useful at times. Experimenting with Opacity slider  and blending modes can yield interesting results.

From there I may choose to use a layer mask to paint out the texture or an inverse mask to paint it in. I may choose instead to apply Topaz Adjust or Topaz Simplify to part or all of the image, depending on the effect I want to achieve.

If you have any questions feel  free to leave them in the comments section or contact me directly. Joel Olives also has some good tutorials on his website that helped me considerably in learning how to do this.

I took a bit of time off from posting. I’ve been concentrating on going through my old archives of images, looking for gold that I may have passed over. I’m also learning more about processing my images.  I’ve been experimenting with different textures and various presets in Topaz Software.

The image you see above was taken about four months ago in the parking lot of Butterfly World in Coconut Creek, Florida. I’ve always loved red blossoms, whether they’re cherry blossoms or Chinese Lanterns, I find them very appealing to my eye.

I took this one into Photoshop and after creating a duplicate layer, opened it in Topaz Simplify. I’ve had this plug-in for a while, but have just started to appreciate what it can do for my images.

I had been staying away from it because it’s basically designed to turn photos into images that look like they’re paintings and/or drawings. I had nothing against that. It just didn’t seem to fit in with what I was doing with my imagery.

But recently I’ve been reading an e-book by Denise Ippolito entitled “Bloomin’ Ideas”. Its about processing flower images using various plug-ins as well as Photoshop filters. And one of the things Denise uses a lot is Topaz Simplify.

So what I did with this image is apply the “Watercolor Painting” preset. All of the presets in this plug-in can have radical effects on the detail and color of the image, so I always have these on a separate layer so I can dial it back with the Opacity slider and/or tinker with different blend modes.

All I had to do with this one was dial back the Opacity to about 70%. That gave the image a pleasant glow and enhanced the colors without going overboard. The painting types of presets will tend to wipe out the detail and saturate the colors, so I try to be careful when using these. In my upcoming posts I’ll be sharing more processing techniques. Feel free to ask questions in the comments section or contact me.

I missed posting here for a couple of days. We’ve had some out of town visitors, and I hadn’t even gotten out to shoot since last week because of the rains we have had down here this past week.

But the not shooting part doesn’t stop me from posting. I always have plenty of stuff to go through in my archives. And I wanted to take a very short break anyways to reorganize my thoughts and direction for this blog.

I’ve been working a lot with textures and tint overlays lately, and have been reading a book on processing by Denise Ippolito. She does a lot of workshops with Arthur Morris, a Canon Explorer of Light, and she’s written some really good books on macro photography. I just finished her one on flowers and will probably get another e-book from her real soon. Her philosophy of how she captures her subjects jives strongly with mine, and I’m going to be sharing more about that on this blog in the near future.

I went to Butterfly World this morning. It wasn’t too hot yet and it had just finished raining, which always leaves some nice water drops on the flowers for me to shoot. (you’ll be seeing some of those shots soon).  This place is a wonderful botanical garden as well as a butterfly sanctuary.

As soon as I walled in I spotted this Blue Mopho parked on a metal rail. I was going to pass him by. I’ve taken and posted shots of this butterfly before. But I felt strongly drawn to shoot him again. 

Following my intuition, I began to shoot. I moved around a bit to try to get as much of him as possible in the frame and get a pleasing background at the same time. The one you see above is the best of the series.

I was able to get him from a good angle with some very colorful flowers behind him. This is one of the things that I look for when I shoot. I try to get the subject with something colorful behind it that will blur nicely.

I’m pleased with the result and glad that I made the image. Since he was pretty docile I decided to get a close up of his wings. They have a unique texture and color pattern

One of the things I love to photograph is butterflies sucking nectar. Whether it’s from bananas, which many of the rainforest butterflies use as a nectar source, or from flowers like the candy cane in the image above, it’s been a fascinating source of imagery for me.

I like to get in as close as I can and get the proboscis covered in nectar. This particular shot of this Piano Key butterfly came out very well. The detail is sharp throughout, but the main thing is the light.

Backlighting on translucent butterfly wings or flower petals can make for a glowing image. In this case the wings and the flower were greatly enhanced with this lighting. This is the kind of light I love to encounter when I’m out on a shoot. I have to be careful that it doesn’t blow things out, but when it works, it’s wonderful.

I was going through some pictures from Butterfly World I’d taken a couple of months ago  when I came across this one. At the time I shot it I had high hopes it would be a great image. The butterfly resting on top of a mass of red flowers would be full of color and life.

I didn’t publish it because I felt the top of the wings of the butterfly were too soft. I like everything to be as in focus and sharp as possible in my insect images. So I passed on this one and processed other shots that looked more promising.

When I looked at this the other night, I decided it was too good of an image to simply pass up. I took it from Lightroom into Photoshop CS5 and ran it through Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro. It’s a great plug-in with 55 filters that give a wide variety of effects. After playing around a bit I decided to add some soft fine film grain to the image. This  seemed to add some contrast and made the background stand out more.

To sharpen the butterfly itself I used Nik’s Sharpener 3.0. What’s great about this program is that I can selectively sharpen the parts I want. In this case, I wanted the wings to be sharper but not touch the background. It really helped in this case to give it the look I wanted.

The image wound on Explore (the top 500 images) on Flickr. And to think I almost passed it up…