> KELBY ONE.COM
[ 83 ]A Final Word Regarding Textures
Another secret weapon for finishing effects is
textures. You’ll benefit tremendously by build-
ing your own library of textures either by taking
pictures of them yourself or purchasing stock
images. As you start using textures, you’ll discover
that there are some you’ll use over and over. Since
textures are abstract, you can use them in variety
of ways.
You can use them as a simple texture overlay to
add some grit to a photo, or you can define them as
patterns and then apply them as a layer style, which
you can then combine with other layer styles to cre-
ate a whole new look. You can turn a texture into
a custom brush and paint an effect on a layer, then
add a layer style to that layer, and apply the original
texture as part of the layer style. Oh yeah, you know
what I’m talking about!
The point is that textures can play a key role
in finishing an image. Just look at composites and
even movie posters; some have very obvious tex-
ture effects, while others tend to be subtler. Like the
HDR Toning effect, textures have a tendency to help
unify all of the elements in the composite. In fact,
you can think of the HDR Toning effect as a custom
texture created from the image. How about if you
ran the HDR Toning effect on an image of texture?
I’ve actually done this, and it does a great job
of pulling gritty detail from a texture you didn’t
even know was there. Many would never think of
applying an HDR effect to a texture, but it’s that
kind of thinking that prevents people from discov-
ering what lies on the other side. All you have to
do is try it! (Check out my “Down & Dirty Tricks”
tutorial to see some of these techniques in a step-
by-step poster project on page^20 .)
I hope you’ve been inspired to look beyond the
obvious and endeavor to expand your special effects
skill set, and that when it comes to special effects in
Photoshop, you won’t be so much concerned with
what a feature or tool was designed to do, but what
you can do with it. n
©Adobe Stock/snaptitude©Adobe Stock/Militiaman: Mark J. Grenier; U.S. Flag: Daniel Thornberg; Declaration of Independence: lawcain; Parchment: Scisetti Alfio; Map: Sergey Kamshylin