Berry Christmas!

Who needs Christmas decorations when you've got natural ones in the form of berries! These are red currants, the birds get most of the ones on the bushes these days but in the past I've made red currant jelly, ice-cream and even wine!

We'd like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a peaceful and safe Christmas and holiday season and to thank you all for your support over the past year.

A fairly simple texture recipe today as I've been too busy with Christmas preparations to do much photography or texture work.
Iridescent Brush @ Overlay 100%
Iridescent Brush @ Hard Light 67% with a little removed from the focus flowers
Backdrop @ Multiply 100%
Fly Edge #18@ Screen 41% inverted -this adds a subtle grunge to the image.
Iridescent Brush is from the painterly pack, Backdrop from Tex Box 2
See it on Flickr

Summer Painterly Pack

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$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

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Mirage

I never tire of the beach! I visit this city beach on a regular basis and it's different every time I go. On this occasion the sea fog combined with a very low tide provided wonderful shooting conditions, if the sun had peeked through the clouds that would have been the icing on the cake but unfortunately it didn't cooperate.
I've just made a Redbubble Calendar of my Flypaper flowers, perhaps I should do a beach one too :-)

The starting image you see above has already been toned blue using various adjustments.
Then it was texture time...
Pistachio @ Overlay 25%
Lavender Skies @ Soft light 100%
Brushed Rose @ Overlay 68%
Then I merged visible Ctrl -Alt-Shift-E and used the PS5 fake HDR adjustment on the merged layers to enhance contrast and colour.
I then added
Brushed Rose @ Linear light 23% and desaturated a little, removed from the lower portion using a graduated mask.
Curves adjustment to brighten the foreground.

See it on Flickr

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

Gift Coupons

Click Here

See all our packs and deals on one Page

Misty morning

This image was done for a texturing challenge over on Flickr, the starting image was kindly  provided by flickr member  Adrigu . Misty landscapes are always great to texture so I jumped at the chance to do this and thought I'd share my recipe here.

To start with I cropped the original rectangle square and roughly added some extra sky.
Serafina Sky @ Soft Light 100%
Concorde @ Overlay 100%
Copy of background @ Overlay 46%
Iridescent Brush @ Subtract  52% (subtract is a new blending mode that appeared in CS5, if you don't have CS5 you're going to have to experiment with some of the other modes)
Then I added the birds.
Brown blurred texture from seriykotik1970 @ overlay 83% this added warmth but didn't do all that much texturally. A warm colour blending mode would probably have achieved the same effect.
At this stage my photo looked like this

It was okay but needed a bit of "life" so I lightly used the fake HDR adjustment (in CS5), this brightened things and especially accentuated the painterly sky textures.  A careful curves adjustment may have achieved something similar.
Iridescent brush and Serafina Sky are from the Painterly pack, Concorde is from Tex Box 2.
See it bigger on Flickr

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

See all our packs and deals on one Page

Pretty Bells

Sometimes when you're using textures things come together perfectly first try. This is what happened with this image. Only a few textures were used too, and if I take a similar photo I think I'll be trying this combo again, in fact I might try it on the daisy photo I'm working on at the moment :-)

Ming @ Soft light 100%
Cobalt cloud @ soft light 100%
Cobalt cloud @ Screen 25%
Mulberry Silk @ Soft light 86 %

See it on Flickr

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

See all our packs and deals on one Page

Fresh

These are the berries of the European Spindle or Euonymus europaeus more commonly called the Spindleberry, or at least that's what I've always called it. The name comes from the fact that its dense pale wood is easily worked and was once used for making spindles and knitting needles. For most of the year it's just another green shrub, but in autumn it transforms -the leaves turn a russet shade and it's covered with these pink "fruit" which contain bright orange seeds. I remember the bush my mother had just down the path, it was where the tea pot was always emptied (real tea not the tea bag variety) as apparently spindles loved tea leaves, it always rewarded us with a brilliant display of autumn colour, and rewarded the birds with lots of berries.

I processed this as follows:
Brushed Rose (Summer Painterly) @ Overlay 100%
Pistachio (Summer Painterly) @ Overlay 100%
Copy of background @ Soft Light 12%
Ming (Tex Box 2) @ Soft Light 100 %
It looked okay like this but was a bit bright.
So I then merged all these layers, on PC press Ctrl -Alt -Shift -E
Duplicated the merged layer and set it at Screen 10%
Then tweaked the toning with Selective colour and Hue saturation blending modes, the settings are a matter of taste and involves a bit of "playing" with the various sliders.

See the photo a bit bigger on Flickr

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

See all our packs and deals on one Page

Flypaper Tex Box Two !

Winter season
Following on the success of Tex Box One we're back with a new pack!
It contains 30 large, professional quality, high resolution textures ranging from the subtle to the grunge.
Over the past several weeks we've had the pleasure of your feedback and have tailored this new pack to our clients needs.
They are smoother, lighter and have more vignettes. There are also clouds (for Bob!) and interesting antique wall textures.
The colours are clearer, following on from the huge hit of 'Apple Blush', we've added several more textural fruit goodies!
This winter collection is also going to be easier to use with darker/lighter images.
The original Tex Box One is still going to be an essential base, we hope you'll have both ready as we'll continue to show use with both!

Still only US $35 for a download.
All our textures can be used in  any editing programme that supports the use of  layers,  Photoshop, Photoshop Elements,  Gimp etc 

For downloads click the Add to Cart button, a download code will be sent to you on payment. 

Buy Tex Box Two

(Please note the file is over 200mb in size so the download may take a while)
Those on very slow connections may prefer to purchase the textures on CD, please get in touch for details.

Flypaper Combo Offer 
Buy Tex Box One and Two 
For only $65

The 30 Textures included in Pack Two are:
Algae, Antiquity Scroll, Archival Canvas, Backdrop, Basalt, Beowulf, Burnished Clay, Chlorophyll, Colosseum Sienna, Concorde, Cyprus haze, Gooseberry, Holmes, Icarus Haze, Labyrinth, Lavender Skies, Leaden Hall, Lime Plaster, Lost Void, Luminescent, Marie Antoinette, Ming, Muscatel, Ordinance Map, Paua Nacra, Peach Blush, Rainbow Trout, Sail Cloth, Sunflower Sky and Voyageur Map

Blueberries

I have one blueberry bush in my garden. It dates back to the days when I was studying horticulture by correspondence at one of our NZ universities. As part of our studies we had to attend a week long block course which for me meant travelling to the North Island. It was great few days of practical lessons and field trips and meeting my co-students and the lecturers.
At the end of the week I came home with this blueberry bush, it sat at my feet in the plane on the flight home (not sure if that would happen now!) Anyway it's thrived in the garden and if we protect it from the birds usually get a small crop of berries...mmmm!!

Processing...well after an initial tweak of the tone and suchlike with curves.
I used:
Archival Canvas@ hard light 40% (this gave most of the softness you see in the finished photo)
Voyageur Map @ multiply 100% (de-saturated to remove the yellowish tone)
Another curves layer to soften and lighten
Bluish colour layer @ screen 25%
Copy of background @ screen 39%
Copy of background @ normal 23 %

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Both texture Packs!

Flypaper Textures Packs and Deals

All our textures and the texture deals on one page. More details about each pack can be found by clicking on each texture button

Spring Painterly Pack

Spring Painterly

 40 Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only

$40

Summer Painterly Pack

36 Textures
$40

Tex Box Two

30 textures for
$35

Tex Box One

25 Textures for
$35

Fly Edges

30 rectangular textures for
$40

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

$100

Combo Pack Offer

Tex Box One and Tex Box Two

$65

Complete Flypaper Package

 Texboxes 1&2, Fly edges, Spring, Summer and Autumn painterly

$220

These are all unique, high quality 300 dpi textures and are able to be used in all your commercial and personal work. All our textures can be used in  any editing programme that supports the use of  layers,  Photoshop, Photoshop Elements,  Gimp etc etc

To download click on the Add to Cart button and a download link will be sent to you upon payment.

Be aware that some of the files are big so downloading may take a while.
Flypaper Textures Terms of Use can be found HERE
An alphabetical list of our textures and their respective packs can be found HERE 

Stuck for a gift for a photographer friend,  we have Flypaper textures
Gift Coupons

Triple Combo Pack (Tex Boxes 1 &2 and Fly Edges) on DVD Including postage and packaging 

$110

~~~

Combo Pack (Tex Box 1 and 2) on CD including postage and packaging

$75

~~~

Triple Combo Pack 2: Tex Boxes 1 & 2 and the Summer Painterly on DVD (includes Postage)
$110

Please send your address.
Please note that discs will take around a week to arrive.
If you want  a DVD with a different combo to those listed above, get in touch.

Painterly Combo (download)

Spring -Summer-Autumn Painterly

$105

Autumn and Edge Combo (download)

$70