Using Mini Bridge in Photoshop CS5 is a great way to try out textures! I'm a big fan of Flypaper Textures, plus I have a collection of my own that I like to use. Mini Bridge allows you to easily try out any texture from your texture folders (jpeg or tiff) to see how it works with your image.
This sailboat was photographed on a clear sunny afternoon, knowing that the empty sky and neutral background would work well with a texture layer. I selected the folder Flypaper Textures Summer Painterly from Mini Bridge, and chose Sariel Leather, a beautiful golden toned texture, and dragged it over the sailboat image. The next step is to choose a blend mode (I chose Overlay). You can experiment with a texture, blend mode and opacity, pressing the Escape key to remove the texture, or Enter key to choose it. The texture can easily be resized by pulling out the corners to fit your background image. This allows you to try out textures - easy and fast!
Here are a few dot points to make it even easier...
- Navigate to your texture folders in Mini Bridge.
- Find a texture that suits your image from your texture folder.
- Drag the texture from Mini Bridge over your photograph (texture layer is a Smart Object).
- Choose a Blend Mode, you can change this later, you can try Overlay to start with.
- If you like the result, press the Enter key. If you want to remove it, press the Escape key.
- Resize the texture to fit your image (dragging the corners out to fit as shown above).
- You can choose a variety of texture and blend modes this way!
