Hello wonderful people on OSP!

I just purchased some textures and have also made a few of my own today.
Man, these are a lot of fun once you get the hang of it!

Please comment and critique these images for me:











This is a shot of Dan Snow (aka - esoteric here on OSP)

Really like 1, 4, 5, and 6... where did you purchase the textures? I like them! when you purchase these textures... do they come with the color edits... or do you edit the color of your photos (desaturate, xprocess, warm up whatever) before adding the texture layer??

Great job... they ARE fun to play with!

the first 3 are too much - I'd tone them down a bit. the rest are pretty cool..

Thanks! I purchased them from NicoleV
It actually came with an action set - although that can be handy, I prefered playing around with the layers myself and editing color tones the way I wanted. So I just went through the action first, and then did my edits to please my taste.



Do you think the texture is distracting?

I kinda agree. Just like any "effect" I think your eye should hit the image first and the "effect" later if that makes sense. That's how I find myself photoshoping anyway. I'd just tone down the texture a little bit and try that.

I agree, the first three are just a tad too much, but I like your blending with the rest.

Great images!

Hi Johnny!
I am getting them too!! I really like them, textures are still really new to me and my eye is obviously not very trained, I loved them all!!
Candy

I think they look great Johnny. well done.


I must say though in the future or for people who want to try this, DON'T purchase textures! You can find THOUSANDS of royalty free textures online. Or... better yet, shoot your own! Just for your information, you shouldn't have to pay for any textures.

here are some sites where I get my textures

morguefile.com

mayang.com

Oh, these are sooo much more than just textures!!
Candy

I like them - but you could always print on watercolor paper and get real texture.

Thanks for your insight Chris! I appreciate it.
I too prefer the last three the most.



Candy,

Thanks!
Let me know if you want any more textures.
I'm in the process of creating a bunch of my own - and they're pretty sweet!
If you want 'em you can have 'em.



Thanks Jonathan.
And double thanks for the links! That's awesome.



Thanks John - I like them too.
I used to print almost all of my stuff on watercolor, loved the texture.
But now I outsource everything. Of course, these would look even better on a nice photo rag paper or smooth velvet!

Johnny... Wow I LOVE them all...
awesome job.

I don't know Johnny, I liked them all too. Maybe the first was a little too much, but it didn't bother me.

I would be interested in getting any of the ones you make too.

love...love...love #2 !!!!

I really like them as well. On the "girl in the red dress", did you blur that layer or ??

I so badly need to learn about layers in photoshop. I love all of the creativity you can do with it. Any good sources?

Thank you Melissa!



I appreciate your compliment Frank.
I just made a ton of new textures last night - I'll post a link for those interested and you all can download the texture files.



Thanks Shannon!
I am particularly drawn to that one too!



Chad - When we get together, I'll help you out a bit with how I do these.
But there are always more than one way to 'skin a cat'...


By the way, here's another image (I just shot it a couple of days ago) with 2 of my textures blended into it - thoughts:

i just got them myself - i have not had many positive feedbacks, which surprised me!

From OSP or from your clients?
Do you know why?

trisha loves this!

Awesome!

Just wait - she's going to love about 90% of what I got that day.
Seriously.

i. cannot. wait.

cough 'em up.

Give me a little time - there are about 140 images that passed my initital inspection.

Johnny - just wanted to say that I love them all . . . really beautiful work! And I also wanted to say that in my short time on OSP I have been SOOOO impressed by your growth as a photographer and think that you really posess an amazing talent. You are a wonderful photographer and an inspiration of a human being, too!

Dude, I love them! (Why do I always want to call you dude? I never call anyone else that!!)

Two is my favorite - I want it to go on my wall! I like it that much! Four is great too. Five so looks like Adam Brody at first glance!

Was it the antique vintage action set you purchased? I was looking at that one and Nicole sent me one of my images run with the faded color action & a canvassy type texture which I didn't like at all and it put me off buying it!

Stacy - You are way too nice, thank you.
I have to admit that being on OSP has a way of making you grow, quickly.
Again, thank you for such kind words.

(going to print that out and put it next to my computer)




You can call me dude if you want - just don't call me Shirley.

I am actually going to have that second one printed on Fine Art Velvet Paper, have it mounted and possibly matted - Then I am going to send it to my clients... they're gonna flip!

Thanks for the compliments.

And yes, it was the antique/vintage set I purchased.
But the last one (girl in the red dress) and the new one I posted today are from my own textures. If you want the ones I made you can pm me and I'll provide you a link - I have about 40 textures that I made last night. But I will be posting a link a bit later today once everything is uploaded.

Thanks again - can I call you "dude'ette"?

i presented some to a client and they didnt really go for them - but i am finding that that my clients in england are a bit more reserved and prefer the more "traditional" photos.

i also created some examples and showed them to some other photographers - *not wedding photographers* - and they did not go for them either.

i personally love them and did you notice the little girl in the red dress looks like an angel? whatever is behind her looks like she has angel wings!

i think your have turned out beautiful. for a while there i have been thinking i wasted my money. but i love them.

It's a matter of getting the right client and/or educating them. I gave a wedding book to my client & then got a call back saying a page had smudges on it and they'd been rubbing away at their metallic pages on their Graphi book! ARRRRRGH! After I told her it was a texture to give it an aged effect she accepted it straight away - I'm the "artist" & whatever I say goes!

Johnny your clients are going to flip when you send them that image. It's a piece of art dude

Some people 'get it' others don't. I showed these to my wife and she got all weepy.
Of course she's ready to give birth and her hormones are whacked right now, but still, she likes them. I then provided a link to my pbase gallery to my family members... all I heard was crickets. They don't 'get it' at all. My dad said, "didn't you go digital to avoid all this?"



Eh, so what - do it if you love the look.
I think this stuff works for every type of photography. You just have to pick the right texture for the image.



I did not notice that - cool!
The texture is actually a shot of some prairie grass I took last spring.
I of course blurred it a bit and masked out some of the really distracting parts.
Glad you like it.



Not a waste of money in my mind. She has some great textures.
But I have learned quickly (and thanks to Jonathan ^ for the textures link) that you can easily create your own - and it's fun!

Don't worry if you didn't get much positive feedback.
I find that negative feedback, in proper doses, is actually a great motivator along with the positive. Sometimes the positive feedback actually restricts our growth and creative vision - because we become content and do not think we need to push forward.

You keep playing with your textures! And show them off!

That's pretty cool Johnny. I think it's a bit over-done on some, but that's what experementing is all about. You've got to step over the line to know where the line is, in that way, keep doing what you're doing!

It fits with the girl on the stairs and the guy in the chair. The others don't "work" for me. That's really the trick in applying any kind of effects. Figuring out what "look" a given image needs.

If you can share - where did you get your textures? I'm looking for a source to stock pile a whole bunch of them to have on hand for album backgrounds and for some possible future band work.

Thanks Johnny - keep going nuts on this stuff and see what comes of it.

Hey there~
Just to throw my voice into the choir, something about number 1 did not grab me, but I cannot tell you how much I love the rest of them. I think they are fabulous and I specifically am in love with the girl in red and the young man on the chair looking away. Something about textures is very haunting and really evokes a mood.
Awesome! AND I'm jealous~
Angela

Shirley, I love them . Great looks. I need to play with that stuff more.

Thanks for your input/insight Kevin! I'm lovin' all of this feedback.
The first set (except for the girl in red) were purchased from NicoleV (see the link above).
As for the red dress girl and the new one I posted today - those were my textures I've been playing with/working on. I have 40 textures that I feel work pretty good - especially if you double up with them and mess w/ opacity and masks.



It's funny - these are all in order of 'less manipulation by me > completely hands on - no actions used' I prefer doing the layers myself. Having the action set is nice, and you can totally edit it from there - but I like to play w/o actions. So I agree, I am no longer a fan of #1 - it grew old on me real quick.

Thank you for the kind response to the rest of them, that is the goal of using these - emotion. I really want my work to speak deeper into someone... I just don't want to have a bunch of 'pretty pictures' out there.

And please do not be jealous - it makes me feel weird to read that and jealousy isn't good for the soul anyway.

Thanks again for your kindness though.




Okay - Sofie can call me dude so I guess its okay if you call me Shirley...
But just this one time.

I'm going to provide a link real soon to the 40 textures I made.
Totally free for those who want to play!

Shirley, you can't be serious.

I guess I don't understand about the textures. Are these different than texture screens of yore? I didn't care much for those. These textured images are a bit different. I'm just wondering if it's somewhat of a fad that'll be passe in a couple years. I'm sure there will always be a place for it, but not everywhere. I get the effect, I just don't really care for it too much.

Why not just roughen up the print?

Okay this may be a dumb question but how do you do the textures? i am sure there are many ways in photoshop but I haven't experimented with textures at all, but if there is a short description I would love to hear it because I think they look nice.

In a basic nutshell -

Place your chosen texture as a new layer on top of your image
Then mess with blending modes, adjustment layers, opacity, layer masks etc.

My best advice, just go ahead and play with them - you can always delete what you don't like.

Your welcome and I think they definitely do go deep.
Ah, well you know! More an expression... Not jealous like I am quietly seething over your success (!), I am so encouraged and inspired by them, but do I wish that I had some like yours in my repertoire? I do! Totally. Thanks for sharing too btw!

You guys went out again, didn't you? Man.....

Yes we did - but don't feel bad.
We needed to keep things small this time around.

It's okay. I am sure my day job would have gotten in the way. It usually does of most fun things.

Most of the textures are different (just images of natural textures like stone and wood, etc.) - but it looks like Nicole V's are very similar to those texture screens.

And yes, it's a fad. Yes it will be gone soon - probably very soon, since it's easy to to badly and very hard to do well. But when done right, it can be very impressive.

The one thing that people seem to gloss over is that not everything looks good with a texture applied. In some cases a very bland uninteresting image makes a very good base - but in most cases you need something (as always) with very strong composition, but lots of open area (like a lot of Jesh's shots). Most of the time, a shot that looks good with a texture, looks good without it (albeit with some different type of post-production).


I agree. That's what would differentiate a true one-of-a-kind fine-art print from a digital reproduction.