setting things up

All this starts with a finished image, one you have done all the shadows and highlights and it is "ready". In my case I will take from the final image after the matching color tutorial

I hate the fact that coloring looks so plain ... the thing is when I look into everything in this life, there is a texture, a small dotted texture on top of everything even when you look into the sky.

I want to imitate that in a more subtle way

So, first I will create a new layer, this layer will be on top of ALL OTHERS!!!

Since I want this texture to apply to everything of course it will need to be on top ... simple common sense.

So go to your layer Window > Layer > Create Standard Layer

Now, this is what I got. A new Standard layer set to 100% opacity ... Repeat with me, calculation and opacity are my friends...

In a way, knowing what a layer calculation (or layer mode in photoshop) does is the holy grail of coloring. It will save you a lot of time and you will be able to create stuff that maybe haven't even crossed your mind before.

Creating a texture

Now, choose your fill tool in your tool window (K in opencanvas, G in photoshop)

This is very important: Choose some gray shade close to white.

Now, fill in that top layer you created not long ago!

Yes, the top one! don't fuck up any other layer. Thats the point of creating a new one, right? >_>

So far all you will see is all gray, this is OK because our layer was set to standard at 100% opacity.

Now here comes the reeeeeal texture =o

on your top part of the screen go to Filter > Noise

Click it.

This will pop up. Set the Amount to something high ... like 45 or even more. Click OK

Next i'll be overlapping this texture to the image, we will do that by changing the layer calculation or mode

Burn calculation

Now you will change the layer calculation.

On your layer window click where it says Standard. A drop down menu will appear, all those are layer calculations choose BURN. It will look terrible at first, but that's ok.

Each calculation will have a different way to render what you have drawn. In our case we will use the BURN one.

What does it do? well, it renders the lower layers with a burn effect and if there is an empty space in our burn layer it means the lower layers wont be affected by anything, displaying what you had so far without any change. We choose a gray shade different to white because white is white and it can't burn anything ... simple as that

See, this is what i mean by "it will look terrible at first"

We have a burn layer, but this one is set to 100% opacity, making everything beneath it look really darker, all contrasts went higher than before plus now we have a texture overlapping.

So the obvious thing is to change that opacity to the one you like or best fits your image.

Opacity

When you scroll that little horizontal bar on the Layer Window the opacity of the selected layer will change.

In my case, and in more of my pics, somewhere around 30% and 6% works for me.

Opacity set to 28% this time.

Check it out

Before and after images on the right

Note this is a very subtle texture! almost unnoticeable, i like it this way, however i set the opacity of this burn layer to something much higher it works great for my fantasy pics ... You can use something different to noise (or dots) .. waves, cloud work too.

Mixing texture is also good.