Blending with Fallen Papers

Is everyone waiting for the "Fallen" elements? It seems so! :)
Okay, okay, I'll get working on those soon okay!

So I was thinking, how can I get people to be interested in papers only. I love papers, especially beautifully textured papers. Why? Well, I thought I'd share a quick a dirty way to add textures to your photos. There are so many ways you can do this. But I thought I'd share a quick one with you.

Please keep in mind that you must experiment with different blending modes to get the effect you want.

Okay here goes, create a new 12x12 document. Drag the paper that you would like to use. Use a textured paper with this. Now, of course the Fallen papers are perfect for this as they are textured. So go get yourself a set! LOL.

Second, drag your photo on top of the paper.





Okay so now your photo is top of your paper. Select the photo layer. Now, resize your paper. It should be just a tad bigger than your photo. For papers with light patterns, like this one from Fallen, you will be able to see the designs. You will what I mean in a moment.

With this paper and this photo, the best blending mode to use is "Soft Light". Remember that this also works with PSP as blending modes are also available.



Well, the photo seems very light. So duplicate your photo layer. When you duplicate the layer, the second photo layer should be on top of your first photo layer. It should also be "Soft Light".

I was not happy with it yet so I duplicated the photo layer again. I ended up with 3 photo layers in Soft Light mode.

With the third photo layer, it seems kind of dark. So I lowered the "Opacity" of the third photo layer to 52.



Okay so this is what I ended up with.



Now remove the other parts of the paper that you are not using. I do this by selecting my photo, there should be dancing ants in the shape of the rectangle, then Select -> Inverse, select the paper layer, and delete.



I'm not completely happy with this yet. What I would probably do next is to duplicate the photo layer again, play with the blend modes, and use a mask and only apply softly to the face. But that is a different tutorial. :)

Hope you enjoyed it.