A (98)

APPROACH TEXTURES WITH CARE

Textures can really help pull a piece together, but

should also be used sparingly. For the stained

glass effect, a minor ripple texture helps sell the

feel. Other types of textures that work well are

water ripples, wall stucco, crinkled paper, and

water droplets. There are many places online to

get free textures for your work. Be aware,

though, that too much photo texturing can take

away from the quality of your work. It should

enhance the piece, not compete with it.

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PLAY WITH CURVES

After all of the layer effects and shadow treatments, your illustration will likely be looking rather dark.

Select your colour layer and the soft light layer. Go to Layer>Merge Layers to combine the two into one

merged colour layer (before merging, you can create duplicate layers just in case). Select this new colour layer

and go to Image>Adjustments>Curves. Within the Curves window, play with and adjust the colours as needed.

The goal is to brighten the image, keeping the feeling of light coming through without blowing the colours out.

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THE FINAL TOUCH

Last but not least, add a texture overlay.

Find a large texture online (CGTextures.com is a

great place for royalty-free material). Crumpled

paper textures work very well for stained glass.

Import your desired texture as a new layer above

your colours. Go to Image>Adjustments>Hue/

Saturation. Select Colorize and create a light pink

colour pattern (or play with the hue until you find a

colour that works best). With the texture layer

selected, reduce the Opacity to 60% and set the layer

blending mode to Overlay.

You can quickly explore

colours by creating

swatches and duplicating them

out on new layers. Then adjust

those layers’ opacities and

location in order to see a wider

range of colours that work

CREATE A STAINED GLASS EFFECT