Getting More Texture from One Image

Backgrounds, Patterns & Photographic Textures on CD

By Rick Wetzel

The concept behind this tip is simple. You've got a texture that almost works for your latest design, but its not quite right. This is the age old problem with clip art and stock photography. With backgrounds however, you just need a colorful image to start with, a few minutes and Photoshop. Having a great collection to choose from also helps.

	This is a small portion of one of my new Digital Pastels. As it is, its quite nice. But for the sake of this tip, I wanted to see what kind of mileage I could get out of it. Obviously, I could ghost the image or change the color balance but for this tip, I wanted to keep the same color and value.
	In this first example, I chose Select>Color Range and isolated a blueish color. I then copied and pasted it on a new layer. By choosing Effects>Drop Shadow, I was able to add dimension and an interesting organic look to my original background.
	The second effect was a simple. I went to Image >Adjust >Posterize... and chose the level 8. In this case, level 8 refers to the number of colors in the resulting image.
	As in the first tip, I chose Select>Color Range and isolated a blueish color. I then copied and pasted it on a new layer. This time however, I chose the original background layer and chose Filter > Texture >Craquelure. I then faded the Craquelure to 45 %. By keeping this effect on the first layer, I was able to keep the mechanical quality of this filter to a minimum.
	Another simple one. This time a marblized paper look. I went to Filter >Distort > Wave. I used the default settings and choose not to Fade te effect.
	Sometimes texures are just too subtle. If you want to keep the values and colors of your texture the same, try adding noise! That's Filter > Noise > Add Noise.
	This last technique is a little different. I've gone to the channels palette and selected the blue channel. I then chose Filter > Stylize > Emboss... Once again more dimension!