12/13/2015 - Nature Splash

The Daily Texture for 12/13/2015
Nature Splash

Today's Daily Texture is another one in the splash series I seem to be hooked on recently.  {yes, be watching...a collection of additional splash textures is coming soon!}  I used this texture with an image of a Whitetail Buck.  The buck was far away in the frame, so I had to enlarge him a bit to place him where I wanted over the textured background.  I masked away his background completely, and masked away some of his legs as well to make him appear as if he and the texture were one.  Then I duplicated the texture layer, placing it on top.  I set this layer to soft light at about 50%.  

While that result looked fabulous, when zooming in close, I could see my deer had too much noise detail showing - which comes from enlarging his image as I did.  Enter Topaz Impression.  Topaz Impression is fabulous for getting rid of noise!  It's even better than the Topaz noise reduction software, in my opinion.  I chose a custom preset I had made which is very light...just enough to get rid of the excess noise.  Check out the two images of the deer's face below.  The one on the left is after I originally merged the image with the texture.  And the one on the right is after using a Topaz Impression custom preset, which I set to about 60%.  This was just enough to get rid of the noise, but still maintain the detail of the deer.  As usual, however, when I start messing around in Impression and clicking on different presets, I found something else I liked better.  :)  I actually ran the complete image through another preset and chose that image to publish {see full deer image above}.  I just liked the way that one looked, even though it softened the texture.  It has almost a watercolor feel to it, and I decided to go with it for the final image.

Like this texture?  Buy it here.  Commercial Use OK.

With Noise

Noise removed, thanks to Topaz Impression