Plugs ’n Pixels looks at Flypaper textures, edges and overlays
Paul and Jill at Flypaper Textures have come up with a series of gorgeous high-resolution (300ppi) texture, edge and overlay sets that will add incredible atmosphere to your images! Use blending modes to apply one or more of these to your images in an endless variety of ways, or even use them by themselves as backgrounds for your designs.
Textures such as these take your images to another level with very little effort. Use them as-is or crop, resize, change the colors, use in multiples, etc.
I’ve been enjoying using Flypaper Textures for several years now, initially using them as standalone background art in the Plug ’N Pixels ezine and also as creative overlays on my various other images. If you haven’t yet discovered the joy of using textures and blending modes with your images, this is a great collection to explore! The hundreds of hi-res images will keep you busy for some time.
The texturing procedure is as simple as dragging a texture into your source image in Photoshop using the Move tool and choosing a blending mode and opacity level. For a tutorial on this topic, see our Flypaper Textures PDF.
The image at top began as a straightforward garden scenic shot, upon which I overlaid several Flypaper Textures in Photoshop using layers and blending modes. I always start with the Overlay mode (which works in most cases), and sometimes Soft Light. The effectiveness and success of this effort all depends on the interaction of the source image and the particular texture(s) you are using.
Don’t feel you have to constrain yourself to using the textures in their existing forms. They can be manipulated as needed to best interact with your source image. For example, the unedited texture shown below left was tweaked and adjusted (Levels, Hue/Saturation, resolution, etc.) to create the finished tree image at right. Without the texture, the tree photo was not very interesting. Now it looks like some sort of tapestry painting or maybe even a medieval weaving.
One of my 1985 European trip black and white images (below) took on a new and colorful life by layering several Flypaper Textures as well as a couple of their French Receipts .png files (cropped and sized as needed to fit my original image). The French text and graphic were especially appropriate as the original photo was taken in France.
The only “problem” you are going to run into with these various sets is there are so many possible variations that you have to eventually choose a stopping point!
Many different sets of Flypaper Textures are currently available and new sets are always being added (see the Flypaper website for current descriptions and more texture gallery thumbnails).
All Flypaper textures can be used in any editing app that supports the use of layers, such as Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Gimp etc. You can also use the textures on your iPad, Android and smartphones if you have a suitable app installed. You can only use them in Lightroom if you use an add-on that allows Lightroom to use layers.
