Step 6: Desaturate The Color From The Texture

At the moment, not only is the texture itself being blended with the photo but so is the color from the texture. That may be what you want, since blending the colors from the two images can produce interesting results, but if you would prefer to keep the original colors of the photo intact, then we need a way to remove the color from the texture. The easiest way to do that is to simply desaturate it. Go up to the Image menu at the top of the screen, choose Adjustments, and then choose Desaturate. Or, press Shift+Ctrl+U (Win) / Shift+Command+U (Mac) to choose the Desaturate command from the keyboard:

The Desaturate command instantly removes all color from a layer, essentially converting it to black and white. It's not the best way to convert a color image to black to white but for our purposes here, it's usually good enough. If we look at the preview thumbnail for the texture layer (Layer 1) in the Layers panel, we see that we've removed the color from the texture:

With the color removed, only the brightness values from the texture are now blending in with the photo. For comparison, here again is what the image originally looked like when I changed the blend mode of the texture to Screen:

And here's what it looks like now after desaturating the color from the texture:

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Step 7: Try Inverting The Texture

Before accepting the way things look, you may want to try inverting the texture, which will reverse its brightness values, making light areas dark and dark areas light. To invert the texture, go up to the Image menu at the top of the screen, choose Adjustments, then choose Invert. Or, press Ctrl+I (Win) / Command+I (Mac) to choose the Invert command from your keyboard:

Here's what my image looks like after inverting the brightness values of the texture. In my case, I think I prefer this over the original texture since it gives my photo an old, faded look to it:

Step 8: Lower The Texture's Opacity

Finally, if your texture looks too intense, you can reduce the impact it has on the photo by lowering its opacity. You'll find the Opacity option directly across from the Blend Mode option at the top of the Layers panel. By default, the opacity value is set to 100%, but the more you lower it, the more the original photo below the texture will show through. I'll lower my Opacity value down to 50%:

With the opacity lowered to 50%, my texture now appears more subtle:

Since my texture is giving the photo a faded, worn-out look to it, there's a couple more things I could do here to enhance the effect. One might be to blur the image slightly. To do that, I'll click on the Background layer in the Layers panel to select it, then I'll press Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac) to quickly duplicate the layer. This gives me a copy of my photo to work on so I don't damage the original:

Then, I'll blur the "Background copy" layer using the Gaussian Blur filter. I'll go up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, then I'll choose Blur, then Gaussian Blur:

This open the Gaussian Blur dialog box. I just want a subtle amount of blurring, so I'll choose a Radius value of around 1.5 pixels:

I'll click OK to close out of the dialog box, at which point Photoshop applies the slight blurring to the photo:

Finally, I'll reduce the color saturation in the photo using an adjustment layer. I'll click on the New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel:

Then I'll choose a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer from the list that appears:

In Photoshop CS4 and higher (I'm using CS5 here), the controls for the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer appear in the Adjustments panel. In earlier versions of Photoshop, they appear in a separate dialog box. To reduce the color saturation of the photo, I'll simply lower the Saturation value down to around -50 or so by dragging the slider towards the left:

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If I was using Photoshop CS3 or earlier, I'd click OK to close out of the dialog box (there's no need to close the Adjustments panel in CS4 or higher), and here, after reducing the color saturation, is my final result:

And there we have it! That's the essentials of blending textures with photos using layer blend modes in Photoshop!

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