My Home Sweet Home » Photoshop

How to Make a Simple Textured Blog Background in Photoshop

Dawn — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 23:11:34 +0000

Jennifer has a linky up at (in)courage today where we’re welcome to share what we’re creating in our homes or studios. I’ve intended to post a tutorial on how to create a simple textured background like the new one I’ve added for spring here on the blog, so this seems like the perfect time to do it.

Here’s an enlarged version, in case you can’t see it well on your monitor:

Background Tiled

I thought I’d walk you thorough a bit of the design process, in case you’re looking to spruce up your blog for spring. It doesn’t take a huge amount of change: I changed my background image, and updated the flower color in my blog header.

If you’re updating your color scheme, Kuler is a great place to find ideas and color swatches (find out how to download and import them into Photoshop here). I like to create sets of color swatch for my blog or any other design color scheme I want to keep (find out how here).

My current inspiration came from the Hello Bar website. You have to be logged in to see much of the blue, but I simplified things and just kept the blue that was already in my header.

Add Noise

First, I created a new 200px x 200px blank document in Photoshop—big enough to see, but not too big—and filled it with yellow. An exact duplicate of that layer was made by clicking Command J on my Mac (probably Control J on a PC). (I wanted to add texture to a new, separate layer that I could just delete if I messed up.)

Next chose Filter>Noise>Add Noise from the menu bar and select a fairly low number. Mine was 9.5% with the “Uniform” checked under the Distribution heading.

Just adding noise isn’t very exciting. We want to do something with that noise. Go back to the menu bar and choose Filter>Brush Strokes>Crosshatch. I like my settings subtle, so from the menu on the upper right I chose Stroke Length: 9, Sharpness: 1, Strength: 1.

I brought in the flower branch element of my blog header—ultimately deleting the branch layer and leaving just the flowers—and then cropped it closer at 100px x 100px.

Less is always more when it comes to sizing background images for tiling on a blog.

Final Background

I like to preview how an image will look tiled before actually uploading it to my blog. Photoshop’s Offset Filter (Filter>Other>Offset) can be used to tile seamlessly, but I wasn’t worried about perfect this time and didn’t use it. I just wanted some texture, a parchment or fabric look.

From the menu, choose Edit>Define Pattern. You can either name it or not when the Pattern Name dialogue box appears. Now make a blank document that’s large enough to preview your background image tiled. I made one 500px x 500px.

At first you won’t be able to edit the Background layer. See the little lock symbol? Just double click the word Background and click “OK” in the New Layer dialogue box that appears. Now it will say “Layer 0″ instead of Background.

Click the “fx” button at the bottom (it will say “add a layer style” when you hover over it) and choose “Pattern Overlay” (this is why you defined the background image you created earlier as a pattern).

Click the Pattern dropdown menu and scroll to the bottom, where you’ll find the new pattern you created. Click it to fill your blank document with a tiled version of your new background, which you saved as a pattern earlier.

Pattern Overlay in Photoshop

If you like the way it looks, you’re good to go! Tile the small image you created as your blog’s background (don’t save and tile this larger image you’ve just created—smaller is better for tiling). If you don’t like the way it looks, delete or hide this layer and try it again.

I hope this was clear enough to follow. It’s fun to freshen your look sometimes for holidays or seasons. Visit (in)courage to see other creative sneak peeks shared in the linky at the bottom of the post.

How to Make a Simple Textured Blog Background in Photoshop is a post from: My Home Sweet Home
© 2012 My Home Sweet Home | All rights reserved

Sometimes Less is More

Dawn — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 16:53:28 +0000

We’re not always consistent in our Christmas gift giving. Because we don’t pay for gifts on credit, each year is different. Last year we told our kids to be prepared for a slim Christmas, but they thought it was one of the best.

How?

When there’s less to spend, every dollar counts. Shopping becomes smarter. More intentional.

Celebrating Christmas properly involves more than what’s under the tree. One of the greatest things you can do now—or any time of year—is build traditions, the cement of family memories.

Ours include:

Christmas chili (because I can only wake up before dawn and cook a 20+ pound turkey one day of the year)
The kids open a movie for an early gift at bedtime on Christmas Eve, and watch it on Christmas morning before getting us out of bed (sly, aren’t we?)
Life Savers Sweet Story Books in the stockings (Santa always brought them to my sister and I, too)
Cheese Spaghetti (worthy of Thanksgiving and Christmas)
Christmas day outing (sometimes we go to the movies; last year it was bowling)

New traditions or things we do some years:

Jesse Tree (we’re behind, but I love this!)
Pioneer Woman’s cinnamon rolls (must make this week)
Visit the official White House Christmas tree, in transit, on Thanksgiving night

Sometimes I’m guilty of losing myself in the flurry of the season, and fail to ensure that we remember just what—or rather who—it is we’re celebrating.

What Christmas traditions does your family keep?

[In case you were wondering: I shot a senior yearbook photo Friday morning, and my 11-year-old daughter insisted that our dog have a Christmas photo shoot on the white seamless, too. Cute, huh?]

insure

Sometimes Less is More is a post from: My Home Sweet Home
© 2012 My Home Sweet Home | All rights reserved

Some Links for Your Veterans’ Day

Dawn — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 05:46:53 +0000

We spent a long Thursday at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, gazing, analyzing, awed. For Wednesday, my hope is to awaken tired children and tired me and attend our county’s Veterans’ Day celebration with a small batch of handwritten thank yous in hand.

Although one or more of the kids have participated in the program the last few years—which of course meant we had to attend—this year I’m motivated by the need to honor those who’ve served our country, and the fact that my camera yearns to shoot this event like few others.

Veterans’ Day 2008

I have two posts up on other sites this week:

25 Years and Counting at (in)courage
Veterans’ Day: A Meaningful Photo Opportunity at Blissfully Domestic

If you’re not afraid of crying like a baby, hyperventilating, and running out of Kleenex, read these two posts by Ann Voskamp and examine blogging with fresh light:

Oh, so ready for fall!

Dawn — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 07:11:18 +0000

Are you as ready for fall as I am? The chill in the air this week is simply delicious!

FYI: I have an easy peasy tutorial on editing skin blemishes in Photoshop up now at Blissfully Domestic.

Oh, so ready for fall! is a post from: My Home Sweet Home
© 2012 My Home Sweet Home | All rights reserved

How I Edit Guys

Dawn — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 18:43:06 +0000

Please note: This is how I edit guys. Not necessarily how anyone else does or how you should, but what works for me.

Photoshopping is a hot topic: whether it’s appropriate, ethical, alters reality, etc. If my photos were going on the cover of TIME magazine, this might be relevant. Since they aren’t, I can and will continue to do whatever I want with them, following my own personal aesthetic. Does anyone cry “Photoshopped!” over B&Ws? Show me someone whose reality is desaturated.

My 15-year-old son is a victim of teenage hormones, which leave their mark on his skin. We’ve all been there. When I imported our class picture shots from this week, my 13-year-old daughter, who didn’t feel the need to expend any of her small measure of tact for her brother’s sake, was quick to mention how much editing I would need to do to his face.

Is his teenage skin “reality”? Yes. Is it permanent and who he “is”? No.

I don’t want him to look back at his sophomore class pictures and see nothing but 15-year-old boy skin, which looked different two weeks ago and will look different still two weeks from now.

I want him to remember how he’d just gotten a haircut and liked to style it in a faux hawk.

I want him to see that cocky grin, ready to take on the world.

I want him to remember the “I’m channeling Psych‘s Sean Spencer” shot.

I don’t want him to remember zits.

He’s got a scar under his left eye from getting caught by an older brother’s backswing in a Thanksgiving Day baseball game when he was little. I would never edit it. That is part of him, and my guys have always embraced the “chicks dig scars” mentality, anyway. ;-)

I do most of my editing in Lightroom, but I use Photoshop’s Spot Healing Brush Tool to clean up teen skin. Just make the brush slightly larger than the bumps and click away. I do this first and then save the image back into Lightroom. (Command + E on my Mac takes the image into Photoshop, “save” brings it back into Lightroom as a separate psd file. I do not check the box telling Lightroom to stack my edit with the original file. I like them separate.)

When editing guys, I usually don’t use the skin softening brush in Lightroom, either, except possibly to even out skin tone in a small spot, and I never, ever apply a soft focus preset or reduce the overall clarity of the image. I’m much more likely to boost clarity and exaggerate lines and imperfections.

I want guys to look like guys. I’ll save the glamour edits for photos of me women.

Your thoughts? Do you edit guys and girls differently?

How I Edit Guys is a post from: My Home Sweet Home
© 2012 My Home Sweet Home | All rights reserved

Homeschool Class Pictures 2010: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Dawn — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 03:13:43 +0000

I’m not sure why it took a homeschool meme last year to make me realize the importance of homeschool class pictures, but now my biggest regret is that we don’t have them for the first 16 years of our homeschool. This is the beginning of year 18 for us and our second year of class pics (here’s 2009).

If you homeschool, for goodness’ sakes don’t neglect this like we did for too long!

The Good:

Can you say, “Growing up too fast!”?

The Bad and the Ugly:

Little sister combed out his hair. We cut it short today. The kids say it looks like Saturn in this picture. :-)

Overzealous assistants:

What about you? Do you take your own class pictures?

Images I Love from Today

Dawn — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 05:19:05 +0000

Today the kids and I attended Braves’ Homeschool Day at Turner Field. Another post will probably follow, but for tonight I want to show you some images of my youngest that were captured and have smitten me.

Please don’t look too closely at the hair line on my selection here. I’m a busy gal and just didn’t have time to do it justice. Believe it or not, there’s no editing of her eyes here, either. They just have a lot of natural contrast in the iris.

I did fudge some eye editing on this second one, mainly because the focus was a little fuzzy. Oops!

No eye edit here, either. The preset is adding some extra contrast though.

Lightroom presets were applied to each photo. In case you’re interested, here’s what I used:

1st photo: Lightroom 3 preset Creative – Split Tone 1

2nd photo: Lightroom 3 preset Color Creative – Direct Positive

3rd photo: PH childhood BW

Join me at Scott Kelby’s Photoshop for Digital Photographer’s Seminar Tour in Atlanta!

Dawn — Thu, 27 May 2010 13:21:31 +0000

Tomorrow Scott Kelby is bringing his Photoshop for Digital Photographers Tour to Atlanta, which means this is your last day to register! NAPP members get a $20 discount, so if you’ve been holding out, this is a perfect time to join NAPP.

My referral link is always in the sidebar and gets you not only a $10 discount on membership, but a free DVD as well. Join NAPP and attend the seminar tour and you’ll save $30 immediately!

Another fun and educational thing to do this weekend is attend Zack Arias’s live studio lighting class. You can view it live for free, or pay for the download later.

Photoshop CS5 is Here! How bad do you want it?

Dawn — Mon, 03 May 2010 17:01:38 +0000

Oh, my goodness, I love this, especially the Bryan O’Neil Hughes cameo at the end. :-)

You know why they call it Creative Suite? Cause it’s like, “Hey, are you creative? Sweet!”

Want you some Creative Suite? Click the ads below!

{Disclosure: Adobe ad is an affiliate link.}

Dang! I missed iHeartFaces, but I’ll post my baseball collage anyway

Dawn — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 14:52:28 +0000

This week’s theme at iHeartFaces is collages. Although I really wanted to participate, getting it posted before 9pm last night just didn’t happen. I still want to play, though, so here is my collage from my 15-year-old son’s baseball game Saturday.

These guys are like women. They’ve been analyzing that top image on Facebook and how weird they look, even going so far as to insult my camera!

Want to see a couple of my friends’ collages?

Melissa’s collage of her first bridal shoot. Fantastic work! ;-)
Marsha’s Misfit Family Fotos