These texture actions are uniquely designed to give you a lot of control over the final look of your image. Every step to create the final look can be adjusted individually to your personal style. The idea is to give you a set of tools to create the look you want rather than just one "canned" look.
The basis for these actions are high resolution texture photos that are applied to your photos. The structure and attributes of the texture will become part of your photo. You can adjust how strong the texture effect will be overall or you can reduce the effect by just painting over areas.
Installation
Begin by installing the actions. The easiest way is to just drag and drop the file "DHtex.atn" into Photoshop. You can also do File > Open and then pick the file "DHtex.atn".
Next, place all the texture images (the ones you downloaded) to a directory / folder on your computer where you can easily find them. I recommend you put them in their own directory / folder so they don't get mixed up with other files. Just make sure you remember where you put them.
Lets get started!
Open one of your photos in Photoshop. There are four actions:
The first two are
DTex_H and DTex_V.
They do the same thing with one little difference. "DTex_H" is for photos in horizontal (landscape) orientation and "DTex_V" is for photos in vertical (portrait) orientation. So if your photo is horizontal orientation, use DTex_H.
The other two are AddTexture_H and AddTexture _V. These two add a second texture to your photo. This very useful if you edited a photo and made a lot of adjustments and just want to see how the same photo would look with a different texture or try two or more together.
Ok lets go step by step.
With the photo open in PS run one of the DHTex action. (Make sure there is only one photo open in PS. The action might get confused many photos are open.) First, a dialog box will come up asking you to pick a texture image. Select one of textures and click OK. After a couple of seconds you will be prompted to make a selection for the vignette effect. Use the circular selection tool
and make an elliptical selection across the entire image. However feel free
to get creative by using the lasso to draw other shapes. Once you've made the selection, continue with the action by pressing the play button at the bottom of the action window (or if you use the "Button Mode" just click on the action again).
The action will now create a couple of adjustment layers. At the end it will pop up another message reminding you that you can paint out the texture effect in areas where you don't like it (usually the face). Usually thats something you want to do right away, but it can also be done later.
How to "paint" the texture out
"What is a layer mask and how can I use it?" A layer mask determines where you can actually see the layer and where you can not. Its a simple gray scale "image" that is attached to the layer.
The white area is where the layer shows, black is where the layer is transparent. (Remember: "white reveals, black conceals") Of course you are not limited to only black and white, any gray value will work and make the layer semi transparent.
Since you want a smooth transition, use a large brush (400 pixel), set the hardness to 0% and the opacity of the brush to something like 40%. Make sure the foreground color is set to black. Now click on the layer mask icon and start painting in the photo where you want the texture to show less. As you paint, you will see the texture fade out and the layer mask icon will show the area you painted on. Don't worry if you accidentally painted too much. Just set the foreground color to white and paint again. Painting with white will make the texture show again.
How to work with layer mask is described more in depth further down in the tips and tricks section.
How to adjust the look of your textured photo
Lets start from the bottom layer.
The Background is always your original photo. The action does not make any changes here. This way you can always go back to your original.
The layer called "texture" is our actual texture image. Change the opacity of this layer to adjust overall how strong the texture will show. Around 20 - 40 % should give you a good look, but depending on the texture and the photo you can adjust this.
"Vignette" creates the effect of a toy camera lens that darkens towards the corners. Depending on the selection you made earlier you can get a very different effect. The vignette layer also uses a mask that can be painted later.
"hand color" is a special layer that will alter the colors of your photo to a look of old photos that where shot in B&W but hand colored later. Play with the opacity of this layer to adjust how much of this effect you like. The default is 100% opacity, so if you are going for more natural, poping colors, you should turn down this layer somewhat.
"Desaturate" will fade the colors of your photo. The higher the opacity of this layer the less color remains in the photo. It simulated the faded colors of old photos. If you go to 100% opacity you get a pure B&W.
"Vintage" overlays a sepia tone to the entire image. It is not only useful for B&W, but also "ages" color photos and gives them a beautiful vintage look.
"Contrast" adjusts the overall contrast of your photo. Since this is an adjustment layer it does not alter your original so you can change your mind later without having to redo anything else. Just as with the other layers, just use the slider for the opacity and adjust it to what you like.
Play with the opacity of all the layers and get a feel for what they do and how they affect the final result. By simply adjusting the opacity of these layers you can create so many different looks.
A word about the textures
The texture images will not only add structure to your photo, it will change the brightness. A light texture brightens the photo, a dark texture will darken the photo. If you have an overall dark, almost black photo you can change the Texture layer to screen-mode and reduce the opacity to 10-30%. This will add texture mostly to dark areas.
All texture images have a resolution of 4368 x 2912 pixel. That is large enough to cover photos from almost all dSLR cameras today. If your photos are smaller the textures will work just fine. The overlapping areas will just be cropped off. They are not lost though! With the "texture" layer selected hit Ctrl-t on the keyboard and you can now transform the texture. You can resize, stretch, or rotate it as you like.
Textures add a nice effect to photos and together with all the adjustment you can do using the layers, you can create stunning effects. Keep in mind these are all artistic tools revealing creative opportunities. It doesn't automatically create a stunning photo for you and its very much up to your creative eye to pick textures and settings that work with your individual photos.
Not every texture works with every photo. I found it's important that they both work together and the only way to really find out is to try. Do all your edits and adjustments with one texture, then use the AddTexture actions to add a second texture. All adjustments will remain untouched. It just adds another texture with the same mask you might have painted! Since each texture is different play with the opacity of the texture first.
You can keep adding textures as much as you want. Combine them, swap them out you are only limited by your creativity (and your computer's memory :)
Tips and Tricks that will help you using these actions:
Each time you run the actions you will be asked to select a texture image and each time you will have to click your way to the folder where they are stored. Tedious! Here is a trick to make it much faster:
Go to File -> Open and click your way through to the folder where you put all your texture images. Now look at the upper right corner of the dialog box and click on the little folder icon and select "Add Favorite".
You only have to do this once. Next time you want to open a texture image all you need to do is click on the icon and then on your favorite folder and it'll get you right there! Very useful also for borders or template or any files you need to open frequently.
How to work with Layer Masks:
One thing confusing about painting on layer masks is that you don't see your actual paint strokes. You only see the result of the layer becoming more or less visible in these areas. It's like painting with invisible color.
It's also not that obvious if the layer itself is selected or the layer mask.
If you click on the layer icon the layer gets selected and a small white border is visible around the icon. You can also see that in the title bar of your photo:
If you click on the mask icon of that layer it will get a small white border and the title bar will also tell you that the mask is selected.
In other words, watch for the little border and title bar to avoid confusion.
If you really want to see the layer mask, hold the [Alt] key and click on the layer mask icon. The mask will now become visible as a gray scale image. To return to your normal viewing mode, again, hold the [Alt] key and click on the mask icon again.
Some tips painting layer masks
As mentioned before it's a good idea to use a large and very soft brush to paint layer masks. This will create smoother transitions between the areas you painted out and the rest. The harder the mask the more likely you'll see a transition in the photo. Here is how to set up the brush:
When you use a brush the most common things you want to change are the opacity and brush size. Always going back into the brush settings takes time. Here are some hot keys that will speed it up.
The bracket keys " [ " and " ] " adjust the brush size. Hit " ] " on the keyboard to increase the brush size, use " [ " to decrease the brush size.
The opacity can easily be set by just use the number keys on your keyboard. Hit 1 and the opacity is 10%, 2 = 20%, 3 = 30%, and so on. 0 = 100%.
Remember the "white reveals, black conceals"? All layer masks are 100% white by default. To paint areas out you need to use black as foreground color. If you accidentally painted too much, just paint with white to fix these areas again. Instead of setting the foreground color back and forth all the time I recommend this: Set the foreground color to black and the background color to white. Now you can just hit " x " on the keyboard to swap foreground & background color out! This way you can instantly change from black to white as you paint.