Adding Texture to a Studio Portrait: Take and Make Great Photography with Gavin Hoey

Gavin Hoey

Gavin Hoey is a freelance photographer, writer and trainer of all things photographic. His work is regularly featured in photography magazines, websites and videos.
Gavin has a real passion for sharing his photography and Photoshop knowledge. In 2008 he started recording and uploading video tutorials to YouTube. These quickly gained a large following and to date his videos have been viewed over 20 million times.
In 2010 Gavin was the winner of Adobe’s “Next Photoshop Evangelist” competition and since then he has given training demonstrations in Photoshop, Lightroom and Photoshop Elements in the UK, Europe and the US.
In 2012 Gavin joined forces with Adorama as a presenter on Adorama TV, where he inspires and teaches photographers from around the world in the art of photography and post processing.

A textured wall in your studio could well be the perfect background for your portrait photos. Even a slight texture can add the feeling of depth and interest to a portrait that a plain wall often can’t. Of course not many photographers have the space of a permanently textured wall, so in this video Gavin Hoey walks you through a shoot in his small home studio, where he plans to replace a simple, smooth fabric background with some texture.

After the shoot, Gavin takes you into Photoshop where he passes on some simple tricks to add a gentle texture over the original portrait. He then goes on to blend everything together by means of a quick color toning technique.

If you’re looking to enhance a smooth background with a small amount of texture, this technique opens up a whole new world of background styles.

Want to learn more about portrait photography and portrait lighting? Check out these guides on 42 West:

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