Textured photo blends seem to be all the rage lately in creative digital photography. And...so, so easy with our Photo Art Blends. Our Photo Art Blends were created to help you add beautiful texture and tones to your imagery simply! Photo Art Blends 2 also includes unique blends mimicking folded notebook paper, wood grain, and other distressed textures.

Fyi...All of our products are for personal use, but we offer a Limited Professional Use License Option for photographers/scrappers-for-hire to use our products in their business. Simply select the Professional Use License Option for each product on its product page when ordering (license is an additional $10 one-time fee for each download pak). Note that this license is not available for digital designers to use our products in their designs for resale.

Instructions for using Photo Art Blends 1-4

(samples for set 2 are below instructions)

Follow these simple steps with your image editor to use any size or style of our Photo Art Blends. Your image editor needs to have layering capabilities as well as adjustable Layer Blend Modes (ie - Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Corel Paint Shop Pro or Pixelmator):

Open Adobe Photoshop Elements

Open photo (File>Open)

Open Naturals Paper or Photo Art Blend. Sample used was 08 PhotoBlend1 from Nature's Sketchbook Photo Art Blends 1

Rotate to correct orientation, if needed (Image>Rotate)

Drag Photo Art Blend (or paper) on top of photo layer. Re-size image or photo art blend to desired size. In my case, image was larger than the 8x10 Photo Art Blend so I cropped to the size of the 8x10 by selecting that layer and choosing Image>Crop. Note...Because the blends are textures and do not have fine details, it is OK to increase their size by up to 50% and still have great print quality.

Adjust layer blend mode of paper layer to get desired effect. Overlay or soft light are usually my favorite to give a pop in color and texture. In this sample to achieve a cross processed effect I used Overlay.

Select soft eraser brush at about 30% percent opacity and gently erase paper texture over skin or other areas you don't want as much (or any) texture. In Photoshop, I recommend using a layer mask on the photo art blend and paint black over areas where you want less texture. This is the same as erasing, however is non-destructible (as you undo by painting white over the black).

I also used the included Photo Mask for this piece to retain the watercolor paper texture edges. See our tutorial on our blog for details on how to use them.

Save as layered PSD if you want to retain layer for future editing. Save as full-size JPG to use on layout or to print at photo lab.

Another alternative is to place the photo layer above the textured paper layer, as in the sample below. You can experiment with duplicate layers of the photo, each having their own layer blend mode and adjust the opacity of each until you get the effect you're going for. For this particular example, I used 12 PhotoBlend1 (from Set 1) and then set the first photo layer to Overlay at 100% and the top photo layer to Normal at 20% opacity. Adding this extra layer at Normal brings back more of the image and lessens the canvas texture. Too fun!!!

Also notice that I simply erased some of the photo edges rather than use the included clipping mask since the photo was on top of the blend instead of beneath it.

Samples using Nature's Sketchbook Photo Art Blends 2
 

Here are samples using Nature's Sketchbook Photo Art Blends 2 and the settings used to achieve the effects shown:

Using 11 PhotoBlend2 with Screen Layer Blend Mode (erased texture over petals with soft round brush at 40% opacity)

Try layering more than one Photo Blend over another. Below I used 12 and 15, both with Soft Light and erased some of the flourish edge from 15.

Using 08 PhotoBlend2 with Overlay Layer Blend Mode (41% Opacity).
Grad Scrap.Words add a finishing touch.

Using 07 PhotoBlend2 with Overlay Layer Blend Mode (85% Opacity). Below is the before and after!

Using 09 PhotoBlend2 with Overlay Layer Blend Mode

Using 11 PhotoBlend2 with Linear Dodge Blend Mode (79% Opacity-erasing the texture over petals with 700 pixel brush at 44% Opacity)

Using 07 PhotoBlend2 with Soft Light Blend Mode (89% Opacity) - great for subtle texture and warming skin tones with an awesome vintage feel

Again, Using 07 PhotoBlend2 with Soft Light Blend Mode...#07 must be a fav of mine!

For this one below, I created a layout using a photo blend out of the awesome crumpled torn notebook paper blend (#16),  which also has a clipping mask to get the torn edges. In this instance I found Soft Light or Multiply worked really well to emphasize the notebook paper folds.

I hope you'll agree that playing with these is quite addictive! Experiment with different blends at varying opacities and layer positions to see what effect you like best for a particular shot!

See our Blog and Newsletter for more tutorials and inspiration.

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