Wuestenhagen Imagery texture blog

Hello all,
it is time for an easter tret. I my case this means a texture freebie.
I admit it is a quite grungy give away but works well on dark scenes.
As I was in the mood for some eerie dark work I applied it on this picture:



The texture is more or less b&w so it works quite well as an overlay. I often use these with blending modes such as Lighten, Screen or even Normal.
In fact I used the Lighten blending mode on this picture to add structures and some fake shadows to the darker areas.


Please click on the texture to download or on this link:

Dark Promise Download
Aus Free textures This texture is part of my pack of Medium Sized Textures that you can purchase over on my homepage now for a

20 % discount* if your enter the coupon code : EASTEREGGThis offer is valid thru April 16, 2013

*Discount code also works on all other texture packs, except on single texture downloads Be creative and have a wonderful holiday!!! Dirk

Hi all,
following yesterday's post I once again wanted to give you a step by step account on the processing of a picture.

This time it's

"Contis-Plage" on a Cloudy Day"


1. Processing in Lightroom 

I took the pictures that I used with my old Canon Ixus 70, so I had to deal with jpg-files, which limited my processing in Lightroom. Fortunately I took these shots with the intention of merging them together in Photoshop to get a bigger pic in the end.

Even though it wasn't a typical sunny day  I wanted to retain the holiday feeling and thought soft almost pastel tones might be the correct way to go.


The sharpness in this was quite good and there was no noise to speak of, so I didn't have to do any sharpening and only a bit of noise reduction after the processing.
Over all the pictures were much too dark andto bring up the darker middle tones. Additionally I used a gradient filter for the sky to darken the clouds a bit and to get more depth. I also pushed the…

Hi all,
looking out of the window I once again have to witness snow piling up on streets, paths and rooftops. That inspired me to take a look at some rather old shots I took with my point & shoot camaras 5 years ago in France.

I wanted to have light and soft color tones, so I decided to only use fine textures with neutral or light tones.

Most of the time I only used one or two textures from my latest Spring Release Pack

I think occasionally I tested a texture that will be inclued in the next pack.

So, enjoy summer....


In almost all the pictures I blended the texture using "Soft Light", "Overlay" or even "Lighten" to get my soft texture look. Last step was always correcting contrast with the help of the levels tool.







Have a nice week,

Dirk

Hello,
Today I'd like to demonstrate how I usually create my blurry abstract seascapes and forests. I am totally fascinated by soft smooth surfaces, so a few years ago I started using Photoshop's motion blur tool and the radial blur to soften parts of my photos. If properly used this goes beyond the shallow effect and can add to the overall feeling of a picture. Hopefully I achieved this with some of my works, but it is sometimes a quite difficil undertaking.

To show you how I technically achieve this, I chose the following photo of a rock on the beach of Puerto Naos on the island of La Palma:
Please move your mouse over the picture to see the before/after effect!


Preparing the original file

The original RAW-file was quite dark, so I had to some adjustments in Lightroom. I also played around with the colors and was quite happy with the slightly muted vintage tones I got. Before I exported the image to Photoshop, I made a square crop and still wasn't quite shure what to do …