Today's Daily Texture features the glorious colors of a winter evening with the glow of the setting sun.  If I had a snow landscape, I'd have tried this texture on it -- but living in West Tennessee, we don't see a lot of snow. :(  So I chose to use the texture on one of my beautiful mourning doves I photographed last winter.  I've shown an image below with the layers panel to demonstrate how I got this result.  I first placed the texture as a layer above the original photo and set it to soft light at 100%.  This gave some nice glow to the bird, and it allowed the feathers to pick up the colors in the texture.  Then I placed the original texture as a new layer at full strength and masked out the bird, as well as masked the texture off some of the background branches.  After masking, I duplicated that layer and set it to multiply at 50%.  This gave some rich depth to the colors.  I then duplicated that layer, and set it to hard light at 30%, which put a stronger light glow on the bird.  Finally, I merged all the layers together.

Today's Texture is "Christmas Flowers in January" and is a mix of red, salmon, yellow, green, and white.  It's perfect for your subjects with red, such as the first image shown below "Rooftop Visitor", featuring a male Cardinal.  This texture also blends well with salmon pink subjects, such as the Hibiscus flower in "Falling Blossom".  For a different effect, you can use the texture as a soft light or overlay layer to a cool photo to warm it up, such as in the image "Bluebird Escape".  I originally used the texture "Ice On The Ocean" as the background for the bluebird photo.  Yet in my original image, the bird had sun on him.  The coolness of the texture blended nice with his feathers, yet it didn't quite make sense due to the sun glow on the bird.  I added today's texture as a soft light layer at 50% on top of the image. which gave the overall work a hint of warm color to match the glow of the sun on the bird's feathers and belly, as well as the wooden tree stump.

How about a soft, romantic texture?  Today's Daily Texture is just that, with lovely soft pink hues and a touch of green.  I used this texture on the two images below.  The sweet little pug was in a garden of bushes with some reddish-pink leaves interspersed with green leaves.  I masked the texture layer off the pug and also lightly off the leaves to show some of the color from the original photo.  Then I added the texture on top of the image again and set the layer mode to soft light in order to enrich the color more.

For the rose image, I did something a little different.  Now if you know anything about pinks, reds, and purples, the colors can vary widely in hue.  The rose -- while a PINK rose to my eyes - was more purple in nature when compared with this texture.  But I wanted the rose to be the color of the texture...so I applied the texture layer first and chose HUE as the layer mode, and set it to 50% opacity.  This brought my original rose photo closer to the color of the texture I wanted to use, without going overboard.  Then I applied the texture full strength as a new layer and gently masked it off the rose in the center, while very lighting masking it off the buds in the background, to leave only a hint of their presence.  So my tip of the day is, if you want your colors to match your texture choice, try adding your texture as new layer and switch the layer mode to HUE.  Adjust the opacity of the layer to get the hue you want for your main image.  Then proceed with adding the texture as a new layer again to blend with your original image.

Today's Daily Texture "Sea Shell Mist" is perfect for your white or cream colored subjects, or any subject you'd like to add a softer touch to.  I used this texture several months ago with my white peacock in my peacock series.  I lightened the purple color tones at the bottom of the texture when combining it with the peacock, in order to have the peacock's white feathers blend a bit better.  In the second example below "Sea Shell and Pearls", I left the texture as-is and simply used it as a background for the objects.  By photographing the sea shell and pearls on white, I was able to easily mask and blend the subject into the texture.  TIP:  If you're photographing still life subjects like this, get a large piece of white watercolor paper {or any paper type, really...I just like watercolor as it has a texture to it, and it will stay put when bent},  bend it in half, then let it pop back apart.  Set your object on the bottom half of the paper outside in the shade.  The top half of the paper should be standing up behind your object(s).  This will give you a neutral white background which can easily be replaced later by any texture of your choice.

If you think this Daily Texture has a color scheme similar to the old masters paintings, you're right.  The color palette for this texture came from a painting from 1901.  It was a bit more green, but I added some cool blue tone and brightened it up a bit.  Because it has somewhat of a horizon line with a sun streak in the center, it's the perfect texture for turning a bland, gray landscape into a work of fine art!

My original photo is shown on the left below.  I loved this old blue barn we were passing by on a country ride the other day.  I shot the photo from the window as we drove by, and as you can see my horizon line was crooked and it's just a bland photo {except for the barn!} because of the ugly gray day.  After straightening the horizon line, I added this texture.  The "sun" spot didn't quite hit the barn as it should though, so I mirror imaged the barn layer.  {TIP:  If something doesn't look quite right, mirror image your image, or even mirror image and/or flip the texture layer.  Sometimes that's all it takes to go from "no that's not working" to spectacular results!}  After positioning the sun spot in the texture over the barn, I added one layer as a multiply layer to give the image depth, and added the texture on top again as an overlay layer to brighten things up.  I masked portions of each texture layer off where the texture was too harsh and finally ended up with something I like.  Now my bland, gray photo has the feel of a painterly work of art.

When I was learning about using textures, I frequently read statements along the line of "you have to have a good photo to start with"...that using textures won't save a bad photo.  I'd like to dispel that myth.  I think the only photo which might not be worth saving is a blurry/out of focus photo.  A few days ago, we drove out in the country for a while while we were waiting for an appointment time.  I didn't have my big lens (the Sigma 150-500mm) I shoot birds with...I only had a 250mm length on the lens I was using that day.  And of course, I see a hawk.  A beautiful Red Tailed Hawk on a snag by the road!  After getting safely off the road, I slipped out of the car to photograph this gorgeous bird against the dark gray sky.  Even with raising my exposure to compensate, I knew these photos would be "iffy".  I was too far away, had too small of a lens, and it was too dark.  I photographed him anyway, as he danced back and forth from one branch top to the next.  It was quite entertaining to watch him!  Below is one of the original photos, straight from the camera.  I love this photo because of the action in the shot, the fact the bird is clear, and he's sideways so I can see his face.  But oh...those wires....oh the dark sky...can I save this one at all?

The first thing I did was crop the photo.  It was either do that or clone out all those wires.  And to be honest, I didn't need all the excess sky around him - I wanted the finished piece to focus on this bird.  So I went with a vertical crop.  The second thing I did was to brighten things up.  I actually made a separate layer in Topaz and made a high key adjustment, which brightens things up, almost like a curves adjustment would in photo software.  After I made that adjustment, the sky became white and the bird much brighter.  Using Topaz Remask, I masked out the bird and the branch, and placed the Old Masters 2 texture underneath to give him a nice background.  Then I duplicated the texture layer and placed it on top of the entire picture. I diffused that layer to give it softness, as I had enough "texture" in the background already.  I set that layer on Soft Light and desaturated the layer in order to keep my color level the same as the initial textured background.  It wasn't quite bright enough, so I duplicated the Soft Light layer and changed the third duplicated layer to Overlay mode.  That did the trick - it put just the right amount of light on the bird.  And this is what I ended up with:

So don't toss those "bad" photos, as you never know what you can accomplish later with the use of some textures...they just made turn your photo into a work of art you can be proud of!

Today's Daily Texture is filled with cool blues and grays, with a touch of brown and olive green.  Below, I've used the texture with two dog images from my Spirit of the Dog Collection.  In the left image of the German Shorthaired Pointer, the texture was used full strength to cover the busy background.  Then the texture was applied as a multiply layer at 50% and applied yet again as an overlay layer at 30%.  Final edit included a small increase in brightness.  In the right image of the Blue Chow Chow, which was a very up close photo of the dog's face, the texture was faded in slightly around the edges of the dog's fur.  In this image, an additional multiply layer was applied, with some of the layer masked off the center of the dog's face to bring more light to that area, while keeping the edges a bit darker.