Soft-Look Flowers Using Textures

These beautiful dahlia flowers are now planted in a flower bed in my front yard. To get this effect, it was a pretty simple process. I sharpened the center and darkened the green stems first. Next ShadowHouse Creations Subtle Tones ST-8 texture was set to Color Blend Mode. With a layer mask I painted out the texture over the flowers very lightly using a soft 13% opacity brush and building up the effect until it looked the way I liked it. Next ShadowHouse Creations 3 Assorted Texture Set T 2 texture was set to Hard Light Blend Mode to add a very feminine look –  also a layer mask was used to clear the lacy texture from on top of the flowers. A Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer was added on top to select the correct texture color by adjusting the Hue slider. The last step added OnOnePhotoFrames toner scratch 21 (see sidebar for website) with a very light purple-pink color. That was it. I loved the final result. I hope you will try using some of the beautiful textures from ShadowHouse Creations website where there is a huge selection of textures that can be downloaded for free. Major thanks for what he does to help us budget-minded Photoshoppers!…..Digital Lady Syd

The flowers were photographed on a table with a science fair 3-sided white board behind them and natural light from a window – shot with a Nikkor 60 mm Macro Lens set to F/3.2, 1/15 sec at ISO 400 with an attached Bower 0.5 x High Resolution Digital Lens with Macro lens, which gives the large depth-of-field effect.