muse university: everyday textures

creating your own textures

a repost by

tammy lee bradley of bliss and folly

textured with burlap

In our last muse university post, Ashley discussed how to apply textures to your photographs using Photoshop Elements.  This week, I am creating textures from everyday objects and a scanner.  

To start this project, I wandered around the house and garage looking for items that would create interesting textures.  With a stack of diverse items at my disposal, I scanned each one.  Using Photoshop Elements 8, I made minor adjustments to color, sharpness, and brightness. The completed scans were used to texturized the photos shown below. I used Photoshop Elements 8 with a blending mode of Soft Light and minor adjustments to the Opacity. 

my husband's denim jeans

a sheet of my harp music - I erased the portion over the fiddle.

piece of burlap fabric - I erased some of the texture on the cup

marble slab

a generic paper towel

crumpled tissue paper

leather pillow

velour pillow

a few tips:

1. Be careful with coarse objects so you do not scratch your scanning surface. 

2. Cover your scanner with a dark sheet if you are scanning big items to avoid light leaks.

3. Keep it subtle.  I tried using crumpled tinfoil and brushed stainless but the final results were overworked.

I have provided more examples and a linky tool at bliss and folly.  Share with me your photos with homemade textures.  Get creative. Think outside the box and make sure to tell me what you used for your texture...  that's the fun part.

♥  tammy lee

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If you would like to provide a post for this series, please contact kat [at] kateyeview.com