Adding Texture to Backgrounds and a Freebie

Although you might have any number of pretty backgrounds to do your layouts, you can always add a little texture to give them depth and interest. Adding texture to your background is very easy to do. Here's a step-by-step tutorial on one way to do it, and a free texture for you to download.

First, the layout with no texture added:

Because the background is just black, I'm going to change it first. Black is not a good background to try to texturize (except in rare instances). Here's the changed layout.

Now let's add some interest to it by adding texture. Here's the texture we'll be using:

Place the texture directly above the background layer, and then experiment with the blending modes until you get something you like.

This was using blend mode "soft light" with the default settings applied.

This one uses blend mode "luminosity" with opacity set at 52%.

And here the texture's blend mode is "linear burn" with opacity set at 68%.

And finally, I've moved the texture to the top and set the blend mode to "linear dodge" and opacity to 68%.

As you can see, using blending modes with textures gives you a wide range of effects quite easily. And now, as I promised you a texture, just go back up and click on the texture image to download it from Media Fire. Enjoy!