Yesterday, I had the pleasure of meeting this fine fellow. He was kind enough to come out of the woods and pose for me and I got a wonderful shot of him on this cloudy, gray day. I use textures a lot to blend art and photography into a cohesive and unique image...but sometimes, the photo...the scene...is just too good to mess up! Do you know what I mean? This was one of those scenes. I knew he needed something...but he didn't need a very heavy texture. Subtle should be my thoughts with this image, I decided. And I want to show you just how a subtle use of texture can make a huge difference in your work.
After sharpening him up a bit and making a very slight color adjustment to the original photo, I added the Old Masters 1 texture as a layer on top of the original photo. I changed the layer mode to "Overlay" and left the opacity at 100%. This changed the color hues of the entire picture dramatically. Then I added the texture Here Comes Winter. I chose overlay for the layer mode, but lowered the opacity to 30%. This darkened the edges ever so slightly, and put a bit more light on my subject. {Here Comes Winter is fabulous for putting lighting onto your subject without changing color hues!} And that was it! These were very subtle adjustments using textures, but delivered very different results than the original. I now have a warmer toned image {which I prefer}, and my subject has a glow about him he didn't quite have before. So my wisdom for the day is...sometimes it's best to be subtle. :)
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