Fence and Texture

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I have a real interest in taking my post processing skills to what I consider the next level. I've seen several photos recently that have a texture applied to them, and I think the texture really adds to the piece of work transforming a photo to a piece of art. Of course I don't think all photos need a texture, and finding the right texture for a photo could be a bit challenging, but it's something I'd like to play around with more.

So, I was looking at a tutorial on The CoffeeShop Blog which led me to a texture in the Chaos texture set on the Shadowhouse Creations blog. I ended up applying the light colored Chaos texture to my fence shot as an Overlay. I used Color Variations to make it a little darker and warmer too. I think the main thing here is that there is no right way and no one way it's just try a texture as various kinds of layers and with various color adjustments and go from there and see if you end up liking any of the results. This is not a science but more a journey.

One thing I learned that I really took away in my travels last night was that ctrl u takes me quickly to the screen to desaturate a texture. Sometimes we want the texture but not the color. I also learned ctrl o will bring a moved/transformed layer into complete view. That might not make sense, but I've had lots of grief resizing dragged layers before, and ctrl o makes it much easier to fix. Yippee! If you saw the way I do some things you'd wonder how I ever manage to post process any images. I could use to add a few short cuts to my repertoire.

Here's the original fence:

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I also worked on this barn shot yesterday:

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I shot through the branches on purpose thinking they framed the barn very nicely but back at home found the branches to be a bit of a distraction.  What do you think?

I so often include food shots in with my daily pics, and yesterday was no exception.  I added a can of corn, fresh asparagus, onion, and browned sausage to this potato soup mix, and it was yummy.  I would recommend the mix and then adding in items of your choice.  There are suggestions on the back.

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