Learning How To Use Overlays

Overlays in photography are images or textures that can be added to give extra dimension to your photos. I’ve had some limited experience adding them to photos. Many of the apps I use have a small set of overlays associated with each one. I was wanting to do some stuff with fire recently and didn’t have many choices with my current apps. This lead me to researching overlays on the internet. I found there is a whole business of selling overlays. Almost all of these overlays need software that uses layers as part of the editing process. The most common one is of course Photoshop. You can also use editors like Affinity, Luminar 4, and Procreate among others. I used a combination of these editors in my creative process.

There are quite a few websites offering overlay downloads. I picked one that had what I was looking for and gave me the most bang for my buck. Packages of overlays run from $10 for basic to $200 for professional quality with commercial licensing applications. I was able to download about 15,000 to my desktop for about $50. 15,000 sounds like a lot but you basically get 400 green sparkles, 400 blue sparkles, 400 red sparkles etc. All of them are slightly different but not really. I was looking for something that offered falling leaves because it’s autumn, and fire because of the recent wildfires. I wish I was a little more computer literate. I basically have everything in one or two folders on my desktop that is not well organized. (I guess that’s on my to do list.)

This picture already had a nice blurred background, I added two bokeh filters for good measure.

This was my first real attempt. the mountains and trees were my original photo. Luminar 4 makes it easy to switch the sky from day to night. I found an image of an eagle and pasted it. And finished off with fire and smoke overlays from my purchase.

This one was for work. I cut out the beer photo placed it in the fall scene and added one of the falling leaf overlays.

This was attempt number three. I hadn’t been using my camera equipment enough so I set up my off camera flash to make sure I still knew how. I added a chromatic aberration for the glitchy rainbow effect and sparkles from my new overlays.

I returned to the Raptor Center to get some pictures of predatory birds. If you have been following my blog since the beginning this was one of my very first stops. If you want to see how far I’ve come in 2.5 years check out that early posting.

I didn’t want to rely entirely on the new overlays so I used one of the textures I had made for myself a few months ago. After blending them I ended up liking the psychedelic feel of these grapes the best.

No Benjamins were harmed in the making of this. Since I now had the fire and smoke overlays, this was the first thing I though about burning. This image took 10 separate layers. Ive heard that some artist like Maggie Taylor can have 100’s of layers. Look up her work I’ll wait you won’t be disappointed.

This is a selfie of me reading todays newspaper. I just thought it was fitting. Almost every day in 2020 feels like the newspaper is on fire.