Texture Effects in Photoshop

Here's some basic info/ tutorial on using textures effectively in photoshop

First of all, you're prolly gonna want to find a texture to use. Photoshop has some built in, but they're pretty limited and not really all that good. I reccomend typing "free textures" into google and going to the sites that come up (CGTextures and Mayang are both good sites that are usually high up on the list). Pick out a texture and download it to the desktop.

-Now, for actually using the texture, open it as a seperate photoshop document from your main project. Control-click on the layer and select "duplicate layer" and select your main project to get the texture layer in there.

-Make any adjustments to the texture in terms of size, color, etc via the transform tool and the hue-saturation control under image>Adjustments>hue and saturation.

-Before you actually do anything else, make a copy of the texture layer by control-click and duplicate layer (or select the texture and just command+c to copy it, then paste it into a new layer). This way if you need to adjust it for a specific part, you can go back to the original texture without having open the texture and import it to the right file over and over.

-Adjust the copied texture layer to be as big or small as needed to cover what you want it to cover. It doesn't need to be exact, just roughly (and too big is better than too small). Move it over wherever you want it to be as well

- If you're planning to only have the texture cover certain things, select that area via the method of your choosing. Make sure you're on the texture layer again, and go to select>Inverse, then hit delete. This'll erase everything, but the part of the texture that was over the area you want it on.

-To make it stop being opaque, go to Layers>Layer Styles> Blending options. Use the drop down menu there to experiment with different looks (make sure "preview" is selected so you can see what each looks like!). In my experience the best ones are multiply, overlay and soft light overlay, but the others can work too, depending on the look you want.

-Adjust opactity, saturation, etc, as you need.

-Repeat for every part that needs textures; in order to keep them from looking flat over whatever the texture is being added to, don't just select the whole thing. Select each surface as it's own area and use the steps as specifically applied to that area. Use the Warp and Liquify tools (under Edit>transform>warp and Filter>liquify respectably) to make it match the contours more smoothly, fill in gaps and make it look more natural. NOTE: DO EACH ONE ON A SEPERATE LAYER. It may seem like you'll have a lot of them, but trust me, you can merge them when you're completely done (Layers>merge visible) if you really want. It's better to have each on it's own and be able to make specific adjustments than to be limited by having to use the same blending options and effects.

-Use the burn and dodge tools to make shadows and highlights look stronger (chances are they'll be slightly faded under the texture layers)

Examples of Texture use I did:

Do just try playing around, never know what works until you try!