12/08/2015 - Forest Winter Texture

The Daily Texture for 12/08/2015
​Forest Winter

Today's Daily Texture is a winter one with some deep pine green in the background, to indicate the presence of a forest.  I paired it with another sweet photo of this adorable Chocolate Lab puppy.  I used the texture as a background, carefully blending in the glittering frosty grass she was standing on with the bottom of the texture.  After blending, I realized the texture layer itself was too dark on the left.  See that splash of golden sunlight on her ear on the left?  The background also needed that same lighting to make sense.

This is where Topaz Lens Effects comes in handy.  I use this module ALL THE TIME.  It's absolutely one of my favorites.  There are two filters in this module I absolutely love:  Graduated Neutral Density, which can darken the sides, top and bottom of a layer nicely - and Reflector, which can add either gold or silver light to any edge of the image.

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I duplicated the texture layer and kept this duplicate under the puppy {on top of the first texture layer}, then chose the Reflector filter, gold light on the left side.  Then I lowered the opacity of this layer to get the lighting to subtly match with the lighting on the dog's ear.  

Then I decided the pup needed some snow!  Using several layers of the snow overlays from the Winter 1 Collection, I set them each on screen mode, and masked away snow which "fell" in the wrong places to make it look realistic.  And now, this adorable puppy has her first snow!  Even if it doesn't snow here in Tennessee this winter. :)