Working with textures: B&W and COLOR

   Honestly I tried to make a video tutorial – there went my Saturday.  Camtasia failed me. While I’m in search of a perfect, or at least working, screen capture studio, here is a snapshot tutorial on how to work with textures.

   This is one of the recent portraits I shot.  Thank you for overwhelmingly warm feedback! And for your questions!

( Please continue asking! I’m happy to share my way of working.)

    I did not do screen captures when I edited it originally. As you can see we are starting with image that still needs some work.

Normally I’d first do Frequency Separation editing face/body/hair. (Have you seen my actions yet?)

Today we are bypassing this step playing with textures only.

Let’s start with Black and White.

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…love to shoot with fog! It’s magical!

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…this is an image of a smoke from a fireworks in our back yard. Love shooting my own textures! Do you have your collection?

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…my go to are Soft Light, Overlay, and sometimes Screen. Here we have issue of uneven texture on her hands and face.

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Mask the offending texture. Use lower flow (20-30%) if you want to soften the texture in other areas.

 

 

And now – textures in COLOR

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…by the way, all of my textures are saved with color being preserved. Very useful. This one was shot with my Iphone – fire in the fireplace.

 

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inspect the image, pick tonality you like, remember the spot.

 

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If all layers will be visible, your Eyedropper with sample combined color, and we don’t want that. We need only color from the texture itself.

 

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Paint directly on your texture layer. It is that simple.  Check out uneven color on her hand – indeed we need to even out tone!

One tip – if you want skin color to be less saturated and lighter/darker, pick color to the left and higher for lighter, and lower for darker.

Play with it. Just stay within same hue.

 

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This is how my texture looks now. See – I painted directly on it.

 

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And done!

Questions? Comments? Stay in touch!

 

16 Response Comments

  • JasonJanuary 18, 2016 at 10:26 am

    Nice, simple and clean technique.Thank you for sharing, I may have to steal this sometime 🙂

    • TatianaJanuary 18, 2016 at 8:27 pm

      Be my guest 🙂 I’m thrilled I can share something useful. Thank you for feedback!

  • RenaJanuary 18, 2016 at 11:28 am

    Your tutorial is surprisingly simple! I love your work. Thank you!

    • TatianaJanuary 18, 2016 at 8:26 pm

      Thank you so much for feedback!

  • Darci ThompsonJanuary 18, 2016 at 12:52 pm

    Thank you so much for taking the time to do this I really appreciate it. I’m really looking forward to trying this. Your images are so beautiful thank you for sharing them and your knowledge.

  • Laura LuongoJanuary 18, 2016 at 1:44 pm

    I love this! I have a lot of textures I have been collecting, but not the photoshop capacities. Taking PS and learning more and more.

    Thank you for your sharing…….I really appreciate it,your work is simply astounding.

    • TatianaJanuary 18, 2016 at 8:24 pm

      Thank you so much! Glad you’ll try it!

  • Amie StaffordJanuary 18, 2016 at 2:43 pm

    Thanks! Can’t wait to try it!

  • sharon branovJanuary 18, 2016 at 4:15 pm

    hi there I love this thankyou so much for sharing, but the problem is when I add the texture and then go to hue saturation, they are not showing up , maybe im doing something wrong

    • TatianaJanuary 18, 2016 at 8:23 pm

      Hi Sharon, what does not show up – Hue/Saturation or changes in the texture?

  • GiselleJanuary 21, 2016 at 12:05 pm

    Would love to see behind the scenes setup for that shot. Was it done in a bathtub or outdoors in a body of water?

    • TatianaJanuary 21, 2016 at 3:02 pm

      It was shot with use of dry ice

  • CeliaJanuary 22, 2016 at 1:46 am

    Thanks so much for taking the time to share in detail! I love your work!
    It is a bit unclear to me, though, at the Color texture from step 3 on. You sample from her, say, shoulder for even skin, then you sample again from the texture layer… Am I missing something in between? You are painting on the texture layer with which one?

    Many thanks!!
    <3

    • TatianaJanuary 22, 2016 at 8:47 am

      In step 3 you are not sampling, only choosing the area (no actions, just visual observation), and from chosen spot you are sampling in step 4. Does it make sense?

      • CeliaJanuary 22, 2016 at 10:57 am

        Yes, it does. Thanks so much, Tatiana. 🙂

  • Katie WarnkeMarch 28, 2016 at 2:16 pm

    Hi Tatiana, Beautiful work! Thank you for sharing this process. I’m going to bookmark it and hope to try it sometime. I don’t have a library of my own textures, but need to start.

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