I recently shared a collection of grungy textures with my friends on Twitter and Flickr, which I photographed during a trip to the park. Shortly after, I was asked if there were any tutorials on how to use them. Well, although I must assume there are a gazillion or so of them out there, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to write my own.
Now, the two suggestions that follow are by no means the only use of textures, nor are they the most elegant, I’m sure. They were just thrown together with the first images I grabbed out of my catalog. I’m sure you will accomplish much more creative work yourself once you know what you’re doing. 
Textures as Backgrounds
The best use of textures such as these – large, hi-res photographs – are as backgrounds. In fact, that was my intended purpose of shooting most of these. Below is an example of an image you might see for senior portraits or something similar.
Texture Tutorial 1 - Final Result
This image uses three photos; one of my beautiful cement wall texture and two of my model, Candace (fig. 1-1). First, we start with the texture image and drag a copy of the first model image onto it as a separate layer (fig. 1-2) right above the background layer. This image was already monochrome, but if it wasn’t we would desaturate it Ctrl+Shift+U (or Cmd+Shift+U for you Mac nuts).
 Fig. 1-1 |
 Fig. 1-1 |
 Fig. 1-3 |
 Fig. 1-4 |
Next, we set our new layer’s blending mode to Overlay (fig. 1-3). This blends our girl with the cement texture for a really nice effect. I would also recommend using Multiply or Screen and see what you get.
Now open the Levels panel (Ctrl+L) and move the sliders until you get the mix of shadow and highlight that looks pleasing. This usually entails adding quite a bit of contrast to make the features stand out. I also added a layer mask to make the transition from the grass to the underlying texture more gradual. The final touches are adding the second model picture and adding a drop shadow and a border to it (fig. 1-4).
Image Overlays
The more commonly seen use of textures is for adding a grunge effect to a photograph. Again, I just threw this together for demonstration purposes…
Texture Tutorial 2 - Final Result
This time I only have my photograph of the model and my texture (fig. 2-1). In reverse of what we did last time, the model image is the base image and the texture is being dragged on top as a layer. I want my grain to run horizontal instead of vertical, so I will do a Free Transform (Ctrl+T) and rotate it so that the grain is more or less level and hit Enter to commit our transform (fig. 2-2).
 Fig. 2-1 |
 Fig. 2-2 |
 Fig. 2-3 |
 Fig. 2-4 |
Now we’ll set the texture layer to Overlay as before. Normally I would have desaturated this layer, but I really like the added warmth it adds (fig. 2-3). I encourage you to play with blending modes and opacities before committing to anything. You might just find an effect that is surprisingly cool. Once you’re close to what you want, you may go into the Levels dialog (Ctrl+L) and increase the contrast a little (fig. 2-4) and maybe brighten it a little.
My final step was to add a layer mask and paint out some of the opacity of the texture layer to reveal more of the model. I usually eliminate 90-100% of the texture on the face, because most textures can make someone’s complexion look bad. Or worse!
That’s it for the tutorial. These are extremely simple examples of using textures in photographs. There are many more out there if you do a search. If you play with settings you’ll find the possibilities are endless. Try combining textures, applying different effects such as noise, blur, high-pass filters, etc.
Happy Photoshopping!
