Textures For Photoshop

Today's photos are not anything special by themselves.  Instead, when combined with other images, they can add interesting textures and depth to otherwise ordinary images.  There are tons of tutorials online on how to best use textures, but basically, if you are using Photoshop, all you need to do is place one of these images over your picture that you want to add texture to, change the opacity of the layer, and then just mess around with the layer mode, saturation, exposure, and whatever else you think would look good.
All of these textures are free to anyone who wants to use them.  All I ask is that you leave a link to what you used it for....thanks!

Old Book Cover

This texture is from an old book cover.  It can be used to make photos look much older than they really are.

 

Rust

This rust was on the side of a green dumpster.  It would be a great texture for a grunge look.

Rock

This image has a lot going on in it.  The cracks and darker parts would make this texture work well as a grunge texture as well. 

Portrait of an Old Man, Staring

This is a portrait of one of my uncles.  I took this photo at my sister's wedding, not today.  It was the first image I had access to, so it became the image that had some of today's textures tossed onto it.  Definitely not the best use of the textures, but I just wanted to give an example of what can be done.
For another example of using textures, look at yesterday's post.  I used an old paper texture for the first photo.

Wedding Photography, Part 1

Today, with the help of my new Sigma 10-20mm wide angle lens, I got some pre-wedding day photos of my sister.  She wasn't dressed for wedding photos, in fact, she was wearing rain boots due to the intense thunderstorm that had just attacked Ephrata.  The boots were a vibrant yellow, allowing for some good contrasting colors.  Especially since I ended up making the whole photo black and white except for the boots.  The lens creates a decent amount of perspective distortion on close up subjects, but sometimes that makes for an interesting photo.
In that I will spend the next two days being in a wedding and shooting much of it, and then shooting much family portraits what with the extended family all being here, I will not get to use my new lens for what I want to use it for, or what I bought it for...But soon, I promise, I will get some good landscapes up on this site and I will do a decent review on the lens.  So far, though, I'm enjoying the different perspective that it allows.

Like a Bumblebee

Her arms are not really that fat, her head..not that small.  Her boots, though, are definitely that yellow.