Textures create neat digital scrapbooking effects.

Have you ever seen a piece of embossed paper and wished you could get that look digitally? Well, you can. All you need is textures. Textures are small images that PSP uses to create an embossed, or textured look, on whatever you apply it to. Textures can be applied to all, or part, of a layer, image or photograph. Textures can be just texture, like that found in paper, wood or canvas, or they can be images like flowers, leaves or musical notes.

Installing Textures

Download your textures into your My PSP Files> Textures folder. If you have lots of textures, you can organize them anyway you'd like by simply adding subfolders.

File Locations - Telling PSP where you put your textures

Now you must tell PSP where those texture files are. Go to File> Preferences> File Locations and the file location box opens. Scroll down the left panel and select "Textures." On the top right panel, you should see your My PSP Files> Texture folder. If it is not there, use the "Add" button and navigate to it and add it to this list.

 

Make sure the folder is enabled by checking the "enable" box just below this panel. If you've made any sub-folders you must make sure the box "Use Sub-Folders" is also checked.

You can turn folders on and off at will from inside PSP at any time by simply checking or un-checking the enable box.

Using Textures

You can apply a texture to your whole image or just a selected part of it. You need to decide where you want texture prior to opening the Texture Effect window.

If you want texture applied to just a part of your image, select that part first.

If you want texture applied to just one layer, make that the active layer, no selection needed.

If you want texture applied to the whole image, merge your layers first.

 

You access textures by clicking Effects> Texture Effects> Texture. This will open up the Texture window.

The first thing you should see are the "Before" and "After" preview windows. I personally think they are pointless for scrapping as they're too small. So, if the Texture window has opened on top of your image, simply grab the title bar and move it to the side of PSP so that you can see both it and your image.

 

So that your window and mine look similar for this tutorial, I suggest clicking the Reset arrow (A) at this time. That will simply place all the options back to the factory defaults. If you ever get a mess in any PSP window, clicking this arrow will straighten it all out.

Now make sure that the two eyeball preview icons (B) are both selected. These will make sure that any changes you make inside this window will also be made on your image. This will allow you to see exactly what you are doing at all times to your image... and in a size that makes sense for scrappers.

Now let's apply a texture. Click the drop down arrow (C) to see thumbnails of all your textures. When you do, a new window will open.

 

You may scroll through all your textures in alphabetical order by selecting "All" in the Category box. If you have made sub-folders of textures, they will also be listed in the drop down box. You can chose to look at just one folder by clicking it.

 

You select a texture by double-clicking it. When you have selected a texture, this window closes, you are returned to the original window and the texture you picked will be displayed for you in the texture window. Also, the texture will be applied to the "After" window and you'll see it applied to your image.

Getting Creative:
Size

Here's where your creativity comes into play. You can change the size of the texture imprint by using the Size % slider right under the thumbnail. Some textures look better when small, others when big. If you positioned your Texture window off of your image window, you can see the changes as you make them, which makes judging size very easy.

 

For the example above, I selected the top half and applied the Gingko Leaf with the size slider at 25%. The bottom half is at 100%. The actual imprint changes size. You can scale textures down to 25% of their original size (which will vary according to who made them) and up to 400% of their original size.

Depth

The next slider you'll want to play with is Depth. The Depth slider decides how high, or deep, the imprint is. I applied the same texture, at the same size % three times to the above image. The leaves on the left side came from setting of 100% with a depth of 1. The middle section is also 100% but with a depth of 2. The right side is 100% but with a depth of 3. Notice how the imprint appears "higher" or more pronounced as the depth goes up.

Smoothness

Some textures can look a bit "rough" or "sharp" at the edges. If you don't like this look, the Smoothness slider takes care of that by "smoothing" out the edges.

Here's an example of a texture I love, but sometimes I want to tone it down. The first image shows it with a Smoothness of 0, while the second has a smoothness setting of 6.

Embossed or Carved?

You can make your textures appear to come up off the paper or you can make your textures look like they were carved into it. This is done using the lighting dial.

 

On the far right of the Texture window, there is a round area with a black line in it. The default in PSP will have this set to an angle of 315, which will make your texture imprint come "up" off the image.

 

If you grab this dial and rotate it around to 130, the texture imprint will sink "down" into the image.

In the first example, the music symbols are coming up off the image, while in the second they appear carved down into it.

Lighting

The illusion of texture is created by an illusion of light hitting your image. It's just like when you add a drop shadow to an embellishment. For the most part, I'm usually happy with the default settings. But there are times when you need different lighting.

You change the direction of the light using the dial or the angle slider. The Intensity slider determines how bright the light will be. And the Elevation slider determines how "high" the light source is.

Ambience and Shininess Sliders

I don't know what they are supposed to do, but all they seem to do is mess things up for me. I can't find anything in the manual or in help that tells me what they're supposed to do. I've only found one good use for these which I'll describe in the "Getting Fancy" section.

Getting Fancy:
Multi-Colored Textures

Here's is the same blue image I've been using in this tutorial with the same musical texture. But I changed the light color to a teal green and played with the controls and now have a white and teal imprint.

As you can see in the "Before" window, my blue image is still there. But it has turned to white while the imprint is outlined in the teal due to the settings and light color I have picked.

Using Multiple Textures

An interesting effect can be achieved by using multiple textures on one layer. Select the area you want to texturize and then apply a texture to the selection. You can make as many selections as you want and use as many textures as you want. If you use a Selection Tool with the Feather option, you can have the texture gently fade out of the selection. Try Feathering at around 100 for a soft fade.

You can also apply a texture to a whole layer, then go and apply a second one on top of it. I use this technique a lot. My first texture is usually an all over texture like canvas or paper. Then I apply an image texture over that, such as a leaf or flower.

Rolling the Dice

When you're stumped for ideas, totally bored, or need something really different but don't have a clue what, roll the dice.

The Dice icon under the "After" window will generate totally random numbers in all the slider boxes, as well as random colors in the color box. Many are horrid, some are strange, but if you keep rolling the dice you will get some really nice effects. The two-toned effect I just illustrated was discovered by rolling the dice. I highly recommend spending time rolling the dice. When you get a really great effect, SAVE it by using the Save icon in the upper right. You'll never know when that effect will be perfect for something.

This should get you started using textures. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Tutorial written by Lori Cook