Today's Daily Texture is another beautiful sky with an impressionist flavor.  One of my first mistakes I made when replacing skies in my work was using a favorite sky texture over and over and over.  Soon, I realized it might not be a good idea to have the same sky in every image. :)  Now I use a variety of skies, depending on which goes best with the subject and mood of the photo.

I love to use these sky textures when I have a blown out white sky or when I have a plain sky with no clouds in the original photo.  I love clouds -- they add interest and drama to a work of art.  By using the sky textures, I can add them in whenever I want.

Usually with these skies, I place the texture on top as a new layer and choose a layer mode.  Sometimes I will use darken, other times multiply.  In this case, I used multiply and then I masked the texture off the bird.  Then I duplicated that texture layer and set it to soft light, which made the colors a bit richer.  After merging, I gave the entire image a slight brightness adjustment to make it sing.

I knew right away what photo I wanted to use Today's Daily Texture "Antique Silver" with...this gorgeous Siberian Husky!  The deep blue and silver gray tones would blend perfectly with his fur.  First I masked away his background, placing him on top of the texture.  Then I duplicated the texture layer and placed it on top, setting it to soft light at about 30%, just to boost the depth a little.  After merging, I brightened the left side a bit, as that side of the dog was in shadow and I wanted the detail to be seen.

Today's Daily Texture is filled with a splash of brilliant yellow in the midst of soft green.  It's perfect for highlighting a subject, as I've done here in the example image.  Because my bird was photographed in bright yellow-green grass, it was easy to mask away most of his background {leaving a little showing for perspective}.  Now instead of being lost in the blades of grass, the focus is squarely on this new visitor to our gardens.  I didn't use the texture as a layer on top at all...I simply used it as a background here, with the bird gently faded in using masking.  However, this texture is a good one to use alone or in combination with other textures.  It works well in a layer mode such as overlay, soft light or hard light to add a splash of brightness to your finished work.  If the yellow becomes too much in those layer modes, you can always desaturate the texture layer, which will enable you to acquire the light from the texture but not the strong yellow color.  Alternatively, this is a great texture to use on your Spring and Summer yellow flowers.  In fact, I have a yellow Iris I'll be using this one on soon!

Today's Daily Texture is full of abstract strokes and was inspired by the colors in a garden of pink azalea flowers.  I paired it with this photo of a black swallowtail butterfly in the azalea flowers.  After masking away the background from the butterfly photo, I placed it on top of the texture.  Then I duplicated the texture and placed it on top, setting it to Color Dodge mode at 20% to brighten things up.  I then duplicated the texture again and set it to soft light at about 40% to make the colors more vibrant.

To celebrate the Bluebird watching I've been doing this month, I decided to paint this texture "The Beauty Of the Bluebird", featuring glorious blues and deep orange, along with a touch of creamy yellow light.  I paired this texture with one of my bluebird photos, but of course, you can use the texture with any subject where the colors will work for you!  To complete this image was relatively simple, and followed my standard way of doing things.  First, I placed the photo on top of the texture and masked away the background, leaving only the bird and a little of the fence he was perched on.  Then I duplicated the texture layer and placed it on top, setting it to soft light at about 35%, just to make the colors and light pop a little bit more.

Today's Daily Texture is filled with beautiful hues of pink and salmon, along with a touch of cream and blue-gray.  I used this texture on the example shown here, and I honestly can't tell you step by step what I did.  I can say I used five layers of the texture on top of the photo, in different layer modes, opacities, and with saturation adjusted on some, with certain parts of some of the layers masked off the bird and part of the background.  This was one of those pieces where I kept going, layering, tweaking, masking on and off, adjusting color, etc, until I came up with an image which I felt was worthy of publication.

Today's Daily Texture features the glorious colors of lilac flowers in the warmth of the sunlight, with shades of purple, pink and golden yellow.  I used this texture on -- of course -- a lilac flower bloom.  First I placed the photo on top of the texture and masked away all of the background along with some of the flowers.  Then I duplicated the texture layer and placed it on top, setting it to soft light at 50%.  It needed a little more brightening, so I duplicated the texture layer again and set it to color dodge mode at 10%.  After merging, I adjusted the brightness and contrast just a little more to finish this cheerful floral image.

Today's Daily Texture is a dark one, with a brilliant splash of light paired with glowing yellow-green.  It was the perfect texture to match up with Ziva, our beautiful Calico Cat, as the green was similar to the color in her eyes.  In this example, I placed Ziva's photo on top of the texture and masked away her background, revealing the texture from underneath.  Other than some darkening and brightening adjustments on the cat photo layer, I did nothing else to this one...I simply used this painterly texture as a background.