Wednesday 9 March 2011

Pushing Pixels

I'm well and truly back in the saddle.  It's taken a while but I'm there.  Pushing pixels again.  Designing digital art products.  Putting together my own website.  My virtual home and work place.  Doing what I love to do and loving every minute of it.  It is bliss.

Recently I splashed out and bought a new digital SLR.  A Canon 1000D.  I used to have one but had to sell it a couple of years for one reason or another.  And just stuck with my ever faithful "point & shoot".  But as I have been building up my website and business plans, I realised that I do need a decent digital SLR.  I love taking photos of the details of every day in my life as well as my family.  I'm not a professional photographer by any stretch of the imagination.  I just love, love taking photos.

However, some photos I will be using for my business, digital art products.  Steve and I go out every couple of weeks to take texture photos.  You know the stuff, walls, doors, grass, rust, wood, etc.. etc.. Basically, anything that grabs us.  He needs those kind of photos for his 3d models and I discovered a long time ago that I can use them in my photo editing to create my blended photo collages.  More recently though I decided to put together a pack of textures to sell in my online store when it's up and running.  I'll also be using them to create brushes for Photoshop, Photoshop Elements.

Here's an example of one of the textures.  Feel free to click on it (so you get the original size) and download to try it out.  It's about 8"x6.5".  All you need to do is open the image in Photoshop, Photoshop Elements or some other image editing software, open up the photo you want to add the texture to (make a duplicate so you're not working on the original),  place the texture image on top of the photo and change the layer blend mode to "soft light" or "overlay".  They'll be a full tutorial on my webiste (soon).

Click on photo to see real size | then right click and save to your computer

Here's a couple of examples of what the texture looks like on a photo.  Just adds a lovely subtle texture.  I turned the opacity down to about 70%.  This is different for each photo.  You just have to play around with the layer blend modes and opacity to get the look you're after.
[click to see larger size]
Yep.  Gotta love pushing pixels!

5 comments:

Niecey said...

Beautiful. :) I love it. You rock.

Zindra said...

Hi Di! I'm herronpoint from your AoDD class. Neat texture! What is it a picture of? Love it!

Zindra said...

Hi Di, It's herronpoint from your AoDD class. Neat texture! What is it a picture of?

Bernie said...

OOOH!! I LURVE textures, LOL, and once I'd d/l this, the detail is amazing! GREAT job!! Can't wait to play!!!
Bernie x

daniel said...

Really love your page. Quite educative!