Creating & Using Textures

Textures can be fun to use no matter what image you may be using it with. It turns something ordinary into something unique. The best part about it is that you can create your own textures very easily and in this tutorial I will show you how to create and use them (this tutorial was done in Photoshop Elements).

To create a texture all you have to do is take a photograph of something you would like to use, whether it be a brick wall, gravel, concrete, grass, wood, etc. There are many possibilities so be creative and try different things. I would recommend using a small aperture to assure the whole image in in focus. For this tutorial I took three images I wanted to make into textures, they were all done from my front porch.

Texture #1 is an image of the welcome mat:

Texture 1 - Welcome Mat

Texture #2 is the wood on the front porch:

Texture 2 - Front Porch


Texture #3 is a door:

Texture 3 - Door


As you can see, that was a very simple process. Here is the image I decided to use for this:

and here are the results with each texture:


Results - Texture 1 - Welcome Mat

Results - Texture 2 - Wood

Results - Texture 3 - Door

Now that you know how to create textures and see can see what they do I will show you how to apply them in Photoshop. I have Photoshop Elements 6 but this should not vary much from CS.

Open your desired image.

Now open the texture and drag it onto the previously opened image (hold shift to align image while dragging).

Be sure you have the texture layer selected and change the “blending mode” to “overlay.”

Set Blend Mode to Overlay


Once you have set the blend mode to overlay, adjust the opacity accordingly.

Adjust Opacity


Now flatten the image.

And you’re done!