In this video I'll show you how to add
texture to portraits taken against plain
studio walls.
Hello I'm Gavin Hoey, and you're watching
AdoramaTV, brought to you
by Adorama, the camera store that's got
everything for us photographers, and in
this video, I'm gonna show you how to
take textured portraits in your studio
when you don't have a textured wall to
shoot against.
Now this is going to mean
there will be some post-processing,
Photoshop, we'll get to that towards the
end, but for now, it's all about the
photography and particularly the
background.
Now if you're gonna do this regularly,
invest in some seamless paper,
preferably gray, it just makes life a
little bit easier, but if you're gonna do
this irregularly, you can actually get
away with something much more basic for
the background as long as it's fairly smooth.
So with that in mind, let's get a
light set, let's get a model in, let's get
shooting.
So to help me out today I've
got the amazing Beth.
Beth is gonna be the model for this,
but before we take any pictures,
let's talk about the background.
Now remember I'm going to
replace this background with something
with a bit more texture, but to begin
with I've got this fairly plain background.
Now in this case, this is
actually a painters dust sheet, and yes I
know it's not completely smooth, it's
full of creases, and it's not really
texture free, but that's not gonna matter
too much, partly because I'm gonna blur
this out with a shallower depth of field,
but mostly because we're going to put
some texture on top of that anyway.
Now what you will notice is,
the color.
Now I've chosen that background
because the new background I want to
add is actually fairly close in tone,
so that kind of makes sense to choose
something that's about right to begin with.
Right let's take our first picture,
now where you put
the lights entirely up to you depending
on the look you want to achieve.
I've gone with a fairly straightforward
position with a little bit of shadow
falling on Beth, I'm just going to check
my exposure though, because although
we're going to do some Photoshop work,
one of the things I don't want to do is
fix the exposure, especially when I can
get it right in camera.
So I'm going to shoot wide open for my
lens f /2.8, so I get my flash to match my
camera and let's take a test
like this, okay, Beth here we go, and when
I do that, that works just fine.
I've got a nice exposure on Beth,
but that background looks nothing like
you saw in the video,
so for the background I'm
actually gonna add in a second light, in
fact the way I'm gonna light this whole
scene is exactly the same as if this
background really was a textured
background.
Don't treat your shot any
differently to a normal shoot, even
though you're going to do some
post-processing later.
So a second light,
I'm going to pop this in right behind
Beth, I'm going to turn on the modeling
light so I can see where the light falls
and point it straight back, something
like that, let's take a test picture see
how this looks.
That's great, that puts a little bit of
light on that background, I'm happy with
that, so that's my basic setup done.
So now all we need to do is add some
props for Beth to interact with,
and do a shoot.
So Beth are you ready?
Okay, let's find you something to work with.
Yes I'm gonna give the bowl of fruit
first, let's try that, okay so let's start
with, yeah can I get you to hold it in two
hands down there.
Can I bring your other plait back across.
Go turn towards that light.
So that's the photography done, and now I
get to move into the post-processing,
something I always knew was going to happen.
Now to make this easier for me to
get my head round, I've broken it down
into three parts, there is any processing
of the portrait adding the texture and
then fine-tuning to blend everything
together, so let's have a look at one of
the pictures and by the way, yes, I do
have a bit of a cold, but I'm fine, so
here's one of the images.
I want to add in the texture.
In the processing through Camera Raw,
I reduce the vibrancy to give
it this sort of washed out look, and I
think that suits Beth's look really well,
so what about the texture, well, there's
loads of textures online, you can buy
them, you can find a few for free, this is
a free one from my website at www.gavtrain.com
What I'm gonna do with this texture,
is first select it here inside of
Photoshop, I go to 'select', and all, then go
to 'edit' and 'copy' back to my main
portrait, back to 'edit' and 'paste', now that
will paste the texture on top of the
portrait, and because Photoshop works in
this way when you paste, you cover up
what was underneath, now in this case
it's covered it up, and then some, because
that texture is actually bigger than the
portrait.
So I'm gonna go to 'edit'. 'free
transform', find the missing bit, there it
is and just sort of make it all fit,
something like that, click on the tick or
press 'ENTER' to commit to that change,
now one of the advantages of using
layers is that you can blend them together,
and this is how you create the texture,
and the final image together,
so I'm going to change the 'layer blending
mode' on the
layers panel from 'normal' and I could
choose say 'multiply' for a darker look.
I could choose 'screen' for a brighter look,
but mostly it's going to be either
'overlay', 'soft light' or in this case...
'hard light' for a little bit more of a
dramatic looking texture.
It all really depends on the image
underneath, and the texture you're using.
So that applies the
texture, but it's gone absolutely
everywhere, including all over Beth's
face, so I need to fix that, but first
there's one more thing that may not be
so obvious at first sight.
Have a look, so when I was shooting
these pictures, I was using a wide aperture
for shallowish depth of field, but now
I've got an InFocus texture, so that
doesn't really quite work, so I'm gonna
go up to 'filter', I'm gonna choose 'blur',
and I'm going to 'Gaussian blur' this texture
maybe, you know five pixels looks about
right - just enough to recreate the look of a
depth in this picture, and it does work
because you can now see that the hairs,
those fine hairs do actually stand out,
where before they were lost in the
texture, but the texture does go all over
her skin, so we need to fix that, because
that isn't healthy in any way, shape or
form, and I'm gonna do that by using a
layer mask, so 'layer' let's come down to
'layer mask', and 'reveal all', and then I'm
just going to get a paint brush make
sure my paintbrush is set to black and
try and get the brush opacity down to
something like about 30%/40%, just so, I
build the effect up with lots and lots
of small clicks, I'm gonna keep changing
my brush size as I go.
I'm using the square brackets to make my
brush bigger and smaller,
and this should just help to
blend it in, really I'm just trying to
remove it from the skin, and leave the
texture blending into the hair and the
clothes, okay, and I could stop there.
I'm really happy with the texture, it looks
like it was always there, but to really
bring this together as a complete final
photo, I'm gonna add a little bit of
toning, you don't have to do that, but I
think it'll help in this case.
So for the toning effect,
I'm actually going to use
the color lookup tables here inside of
Photoshop.
Now I'm gonna find them via
the 'adjustments panel', you can also do it
under 'image adjustments', it's this little
grid of nine here, click on that, and then
I'm going to choose, well we could do all
sorts of things, but it's the top one here,
and I want a nice warm color tone, so I'm
gonna add the 'full colors look', that
looks pretty good, that adds a lovely
warmth to both the texture, to Beth, the
background, it all looks really good.
It's perhaps just a little bit strong, so I'm
gonna pull the opacity back for that
layer, let's make it around about 70ish %,
and again you could stop here, but one
more go, let's add one more of these
color look-up tables, and this time I'm
gonna go with 'tension green', which adds a
very weird tone, but I only want a little
bit of that, so we'll bring that down to
the high teens, and that just adds just a
little bit of tonality to that picture,
and again helps just to blend the whole
thing together, and with a few other
tweaks and a bit of contrast adjustment,
there is my final image, complete with
its brand-new background.
In an ideal world, I'd probably have this
texture on my studio wall, so I could do
everything in camera,
but there's actually a big
advantage to adding textures in
Photoshop, and it's basically this, you're
not stuck with the same textured wall in
your studio forever and ever, because
trust me, that can become quite grating
after a while.
Now if you've enjoyed this
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I'm Gavin Hoey thanks for watching.