How to Edit Lightly With A Texture

This is a fun capture of Toulouse. He is tumbling out in the sunny summer garden totally focused in a wand toy and I am frantically moving around and practising capturing cats in motion. It is a fun shot but there is a lot of grass surrounding my favourite tabby. So, I was curious about making the background a bit more interesting.

Could I do it without disturbing the playful mood? Let’s see.

Light and Easy Edits

You know I suggest that you use a light touch when you edit a cat photo. Small edits and adjustments can be deleted if you feel you have gone too far, but big ones might disappoint you as they don’t seem to work with your vision for a cat’s portrait or shot.

This action shot of Toulouse is a touch blurry but still a lot of fun. I cropped it closer to keep the focus on the tabby cat and carefully sharpened the cat ‘shape’ a small amount.

• I recently joined Anthony Turnham’s mailing list. He is a British photographer based in New Zealand since 2006, like my family and cats, and when I joined his list I got a set of five skies and five textures to play with.

This is a very small section of one of Anthony’s textures that I have used and you can see it I am using it as a layer in my photo here.

You need to adjust the transparency or opacity until you get the effect you are after. 100% means you see only the texture. 25/30% will give you an effect like the one I achieved with with Toulouse (below). The texture adds as almost painted in oils quality to it.

Editing Tip

Remember that not every adjustment you make needs to be obvious and edits can do more than correct a mistake. Some are gentle and subtle or simply to add visual interest or fun.

This last shot of Toulouse shows how you might push the creative envelope into new territory, just to see what happens. The cropped cat photo has a texture overlay of 35%. I didn’t get the light right so I explored with a texture, just for fun.

How Do I Add A Texture?

Adding a texture is straightforward on a computer. You add a second layer on top of the image and adjust its opacity so it is more, or less, see-through. This graphic below gives you a good idea of what layers look like in your software, or even on your smartphone.

Layers might not be on your to do list right now but at some point you might like to explore them. Enjoy!

If you want to really explore textures Anthony has a detailed video here that goes into the creative ‘art’ side of textures and their impact. (30 mins approx.)