A quick guide to adding textures to your photos using the Virtual Photographer plug-in.

Photographer John Short recommended the Virtual Photographer Plug-In on page 41 of the April 2008 issue of Photography Monthly. The use of texture in digital photography is a popular trend so I thought I’d take a closer look at the plug-in.

The first step was to download and install the plug-in from the OptikVerve Labs website. The instructions were simple and easy to follow. At the moment it’s only available for the PC, but a Mac version may follow. According to the website, it can be used with Adobe Photshop, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Paint Shop Pro, Photo-Paint and other popular imaging software. I tested it with Adobe Photoshop CS3.

Once installed, I accessed the plug-in using the drop-down filter menu. A control panel appeared and I could select the filter effect that I wanted.

Here are the results of my experiment. These are just some of the preset filers available. It’s also possible to adjust the settings yourself, which combined with Photoshop’s layers gives a nearly infinite variety of effects:

Verdict: Virtual Photographer is a wonderful plug-in. I could have hours of fun with this. Recommended.

Need some more inspiration? Check out these three flickr photographers that use textures:

Linda Plaisted

Tiavir

Monika Pachecka

I also found this nifty tutorial on adding textures to photos. And another one here.

[Update] Another excellent tutorial on adding textures to photos here.

Got some cool photos that use Virtual Photographer? Send them in (andrewsgibson [at] gmail [dot] com) and I’ll post them and link back to your website/blog/flickr photos.

All the photos are Copyright © Andrew Gibson. Please contact me for permission to use in any way. All the photos are available for licensing under Rights Managed licences.

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