Layering Textures
Friday, September 4, 2009 at 12:01AM 
I've been photographing textures lately to use with layering work in Photoshop CS4. Normally I don't do this kind of thing, but I feel it's important to always stretch your horizons, and learn new techniques. My friend and colleague, Dominique Doktor has been showing me some tricks and tips. I recommend you check out her blog to see some of her excellent work.
Here in NYC, there are useful surfaces everywhere. The more gritty and grungy, the better. Sure I get a lot of strange looks when shooting these. I see many expressions which clearly say "Why the hell is he photographing the wall?" Nevertheless, I continue to go about my work as these textures can be used to create something totally different.
For example, to create the shot above, I blended these two shots with layer masking. The process is fairly simple. Start with your original image, then open up a new layer with your textured image. Change the opacity of the textured image to around 30%. Next, apply a white layer mask to the textured image. Using a black brush at a reduced opacity of (10-50%) brush back in some of the areas where you don't want the texture to show. If you wanted, you can add more layers with different textures, etc. For this one, I felt that one layer was enough. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this kind of technique.
New York City
Reader Comments (3)
Hey Chris,
Looks great... I like that you posted the original and the texture shot as well. good thinking. Thanks for the shout out, always appreciated!
- Dominique
I like it. I can't really put into words what I'm thinking, so I'm going to sum it up and say that I like it.
Next time though, you should totally start talking to the wall/texture when people are walking by giving you weird looks. Like, "Smile," "Say cheese," "Can you slightly turn your head," etc... their looks then would be priceless! :D
Thanks DD, and Lexi. :)