In The Nature Splash Texture Collection, you receive 40 fabulous textures - 20 with bold and exciting brush strokes and splashes, and the same 20 reworked into a softer style with a watercolor look.  Inspired by the colors of nature, this collection will work splendidly will all of your nature subjects, as well as other subjects, such as architecture, human subjects and more!  You decide which version works best based on the essence, personality and mood of your subject and the vision you have in mind for your finished art.  See how I work with these textures in the video below, and check out the collection and some examples here.

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.

Today's Daily Texture is another abstract one, perfect for working in your subjects that may have a plain background or a super messy one.  While you certainly can be neat and exact with your masking on these, I prefer to be a bit sloppy with it, masking away parts of the subject to make the subject and the background texture become one.  This texture is so fun and versatile, I was able to quickly create a series of three eagle images.  All three of these eagle photos were made on the same day, in the same lighting, yet all three finished works of art look different and unique thanks to the texture, and orienting it different ways for each image.  Yet, because I used the same texture for all three, they still go together, creating an interesting series...which is always a good thing when buyers are looking for art.  If they like one, they will probably like them all. :)

Today's Daily Texture is an abstract one, full of energy and excitement!  It's perfect for adding to a static subject to give it a sense of movement, despite the fact the subject is perfectly still.  It's also a good one for hiding an imperfection in the original photo, which both of these example photos had.  The photos are good...sharp and clear.  But on both, something was missing.  In the Red Tailed Hawk example, the bottom edge of her tail was cut off in the frame.  And the deer...well...he had no legs...once again, cut off in the frame.  These two subjects were very close to me and when you're using a 500mm lens, sometimes you just can't get them all in the photo.  So when doing my blending, I actually blended away the problem areas, revealing the texture underneath, and the subject then became one with the painting.  I kept the color tones the same as the texture with the hawk, and for the deer, I changed the orientation of the texture as well as the color tones, in order to make it blend better with his fur.

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. :)

Since my dark texture "Woodsmoke" was so popular, I thought I'd create another dark one, this one with some warmer tones.  I captured this photo of a doe peering at me from within the dark cover of the woods, and because I was shooting with a 500mm from my car, and she was right beside the road, there was no way I could even get her whole head in the photo.  I wasn't sure what I was going to do with this picture...and when I finished Today's Daily Texture, I knew!  I used the texture as a background, masking away her original background in Topaz PhotoFXLab.  Then I duplicated the texture layer twice, placing both on top.  The first layer was set to multiply at 30% and the second was set to soft light at 60%.  This gave her a bit more drama.  After merging, I brightened up just the highlight in her eye to bring the viewer's focus to that area of the final image.

Today's Daily Texture features the beautiful glow of warm ground cover paired with a chilly blue sky and is the perfect place for your wildlife subjects or anything else you wish to enhance with some drama and great lighting!  I used this texture with both of the images below as a background and as a soft light overlay at a very low opacity.  In the second image, I also added some falling snow from the Winter 1 Collection to give it a colder feel, as what you might see during the first snowfall of the season.

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

P.S.  When it comes to masking backgrounds away from deer with antlers, I've decided Topaz Remask ROCKS!  Check it out here or click the banner below.