Tried adding canvas texture to my digital painting and it looked like a cheap photo filter

I was working on a portrait last week in Procreate and thought adding a heavy linen canvas overlay would make it feel more like a real painting. Ended up looking like a bad Instagram filter from 2016 and I had to start over from scratch. Learned that subtlety matters way more than I thought with texture layers. Anybody else ruin a piece by getting too carried away with effects?

3 comments

3 Comments

green.iris15d ago

Oh man, I totally wrecked a landscape piece with a heavy canvas filter last month. It was supposed to look like a classic oil painting but instead it looked like someone smeared Vaseline on my screen. I had to scrub all those texture layers off and start fresh. The worst part was I spent two hours tweaking the opacity and blend modes trying to save it. Now I barely touch texture overlays unless they're set to maybe 15% or less.

emma_baker6115d ago

Yeah "smeared Vaseline on my screen" is EXACTLY what happened to my friend Sarah with a waterfall photo she took. @green.iris she layered this heavy linen texture on top and it turned the water into this muddy brown mess that looked like dirty dishwater. She tried every blending mode in Photoshop for like an hour before giving up and just starting over from scratch. Now she ONLY uses texture overlays if she scans actual paper or fabric and keeps them under 10% opacity.

blair_chen8115d ago

Honestly @emma_baker61 your friend's waterfall story reminds me of something that happened with a buddy of mine. He tried to add a subtle paper texture to a portrait shot and it completely ate all the skin detail - his subject went from looking like a real person to a wax figure in about two seconds flat. The worst part is he didn't notice until he had already flattened the layers and saved it as a jpeg. Now he keeps a little sticky note on his monitor that says "textures are like hot sauce - a little goes a long way." That's basically become my motto too after that canvas filter disaster with the landscape. Ngl I think we all have to learn this one the hard way at least once.