Texture Preferences

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Texture Preferences

I've been working on doing some QC for the upcoming July Collab, and it's become apparent that there are various things I'm unaware of. So here's a question for everyone to weigh in on:

Do you expect everything (paper, elements, alphas) to have some sort of texture, or in some cases is it alright to just have color?

I use papers with texture way more frequently than just color. But I don't think it's out of the box to have some elements or papers without texture.

When I was a paper scrapper I used 'flat' paper frequently....but even then if I had the choice of Bazzill or flat I'd choose Bazzill paper... ;o)

Till a month or so before, I used to think it was good when things have just color. My portions of last blog trains were full of non-textured things. But on SNP design mentoring they asked us to put texture - even if it´s a very subtle one - to almost everything. So now I´m texturing my stuff and hoping people would like them better that way.

What is somehow a problem. I´m not very confident at making my own textures yet, and have almost none that are CU4CU. So we will probably see more PU/S4H things from me than CU allowed stuff.

Papers MUST have a texture, because if not, then anyone can make one with the flood-fill tool, and that's not designing. But elements, hmm... it really depends. If there's no texture, same thing really. But to me, texture on elements doesn't necessarily mean an overlay, but a layer style that gives it some depth or something.

I think one of the things digital tries to do is make it look like layouts are real paper. So if something has no texture at all, it just looks purely digital and doesn't work, if that makes sense. I'm having a hard time explaining what I mean this morning. Not enough caffeine yet!

I LOVE texture, but I think it depends on the designer. In a store you would (or at least the ones I know of) you would have to add some type of texture, but for fun, I guess some people like just color, or maybe they don't fully know how to apply texture to all colors. Which could easily be fixed by a tutorial on adding texture to all colors or something like that. Personally though, I love texture and sometimes tend to use too much, haha.. For elements and alphas, I also use some type of texture. I generally make something I like, then make a layer style out of it, so I will always have that texture/style. Then I just pull up my texture styles and choose one quickly, then add whatever else to finish it.

@Lorien- I make almost all of my textures using textures from plaintextures.com.They are all free, you just have to register and sign in to get them. I think there is a limit of 10 downloads a day, but that really is a lot. My favorite textures to use there are the paper and fabric. However, they also have brushes and many other textures that you could go crazy with. I emailed the founder/owner and he said we could use the textures as commercial use for digital scrapbooking. There are also lots of other GREAT finds there! If you want some textures already made, however, I have lots I will gladly share for cu4cu, just let me know and I'll put them in the freebie section of the forum:)

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Also projects like 'project life' some of those kits are flat colors and I kind of expect them to be that way since the purpose is to print it out yourself, the paper itself already has texture same applies with print outs unless it's going to be printed on glossy photo paper.

I usually put texture on my papers that I sell since most people buying them are "digital scrapbookers", but for hybrid crafts I think its better to not have digital textures added since, as Fran.Ny. said, the paper your printing on gives it the texture. Also, texture (especialy highly textured) papers print out muddy looking from the texture, so if I want it for a hybrid project I don't want any texture (or as little as possible).

I have to disagree with Brandi in some respects about flat papers don't involve any design work. I have designed some papers with a lot of detailed designs and colours made especially for printing. These kinds of papers need to be very crisp whereas texture can hide some "blemishes". If you take a look at Shery K Designs, her stuff is totally cute, and very little if any has texture. I print out the digi papers and love using her stuff for my cards.

I have evolved. I now seem to apply texture to almost everything. My reasoning is just because I like how it looks more realistic, looks more like creative "art", and looks like I took some time to actually create a piece of digital design that I put some sweat into. I don't mean that a plaid design with no texture isn't a creative piece - I simply mean that - when I personally design something like a plaid - I will add something to make it look like fabric, or crumbled paper - or simple add a fold to it. It's not "done" until I add that little extra dash of design.

Also - I make my own textures by taking photos of weird things like rusted doors, cement, bubble wrap, etc. When others are aiming their camera skywards, I'm usually snapping photos of the sidewalk, the side of buildings, tire tracks, wooden floors, etc. Actually very fun to do.

When I did the first blog train I didn't even know to put texture on paper...boy was I a newbie! Now that I have more experience and I also took the Design Mentoring class, here is my thought...

If you were paper scrapping wouldn't the paper have some sort of texture? So my thought is that if you are digi-scrapping in lieu of paper scrapping it would only make sense of having texture to the papers and whichever elements were supposed to be paper then they should have texture too. I know I have styles for plastic, leather, etc so they of course would not need the paper texture but if say I put an epoxy style on say and alpha, I would put it on top of the textured paper.

I look at it this way, what in your house (or anywhere for that matter) is just a film of color? Maybe just plastic wrap. Basically I think we are trying to replicate real world items.

Just my personal thoughts.

Thanks for all the input ladies.

I usually texture my papers, but sometimes with an occasional element I like the "clean look." It's also good to keep in mind the difference in preference for hybrid scrapping vs digital.

@Sheila: Thanks for that great link!

@Cat, Ah, I wasn't even thinking of patterns! I was just thinking of solids, lol. I was a little muddled when I posted that. I've been having allergy headaches something fierce the last few days.

@Brandi: Although the out-of-caffeine thing, your comment made sense to me. Well, I count things like metal actions and sometimes even glitter as textures too, although they have more than a overlay involved.

@Sheila: Thanks for the great site. Adding texture to all colors can be hard when you´re beginning, and maybe it´s a reason why some beginners don´t use textures a lot, as you said... But I guess that when you go a little further on the texture world and understand the reasons why people prefer textured stuff, then texturing things start to be really fun.

@Fran @Cat: I remember when I first started hybrid scrapping I used to get really annoyed with high-textured papers. Also, when I was beginning, no one told me that was important to zoom at 100% to see how everything really looked like. So, when I printed digital pages as decorative banners at first time, I haven´t realised one of my backgrounds (a yellow paper) was in fact a textured paper made to look like cardbord. When I saw the print, I thought it was a fail of the printer that made the banner have darker parts... then I realised that it was the paper, because it haven´t happened on the photos or elements... But, I am tending to make my kits more oriented to digital scrappers rather than the hybrid ones.

This is an interesting question. I am not at all attracted to digital scrapbooking papers without texture. They look "cheap" somehow, like they are "mere pixels" instead of "real things." That's just how they read to my brain, I'm not saying it's unequivocally true. I learned through discussion here that for people who hybrid scrap texture is very much unwanted because, as Lorien describes, it makes things muddy when printed out.

But someone mentioned the Project Life materials, and it made me realize that I have been very happily scrapping with the new PL Rain kit, which is totally without texture, and loving it. (Here's an example: http://eversoscrumptiously.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/project-life-week-17-april-22-28/) But I have different expectations for those materials - if I were making a regular scrapbook layout with them I would definitely add texture.

As far as elements go, unless something is deliberately made to look like a sticker (I love this one of yours: https://www.digitalscrapbook.com/marisa-lerin/designs/cloud-sticker-01-asset-embellishment-rain-black-white ) I won't be attracted to it unless it has some kind of texture or depth. But then again, I don't like scrapping with acrylic/flair/shiny looking things, so if the awesome set of Belgium arrows that I passed up recently had been plain flat designs I would have probably snapped them up and added my own paper texture to them.

@Violet: I'm a big sucker for shiny. Although, both the new gear and arrow kits have "flat" grunge versions.

@Marisa: They do??? How did I miss that? Oh boy, time for some downloading fun!

@Marisa I too love love love shiny things! I don't think I scrap too many layouts without at least some glitter!

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@Cat, Ah, I wasn't even thinking of patterns! I was just thinking of solids, lol. I was a little muddled when I posted that. I've been having allergy headaches something fierce the last few days.

@Brandi: I know that one... I don't have allergies, but I do get headaches from weather changes. I get a lot of weather headaches this time of year living in Alberta. Especially here in Calgary. One of the favourite sayings by Calgarians is "If you don't like the weather, wait 10 minutes and it will change."

It´s like my town then - I already had 3 different weathers today... and it´s 2pm... Very awful day, only have seen the sun for 20 minutes in the morning... and after it´s gone I´m feeling so lazy smiley

I think that we can have both, textured and flat papers...I usually offer the both in my kits, 'cause I know that the using depends of the way of think (and pershaps wether day to smiley)))

I must have texture, but I try to make some paper with only a slight texture. Realism is important and every paper has texture.

I almost always have texture. If something I download doesn't have it I add it with the texturizer plug in-if it's needed.

Being a digi-scrapper I never even thought of papers coming out all 'muddy' when you print them. I love texture, somehow papers look fake if they don't have any texture. But I am with Violet on the Project Life type of layouts; somehow it doesn't seem to bother me as much there. Probably because of the clean, uncluttered look they need to have because of the amount of photos and journaling.

I think that it depends on what it is. Stickers and vectors don't really need as much texture, if it's a cartoon-like element for example. I personally love textures though. I find that subtle textures make things more realistic. Here is a site that has subtle patterns: http://subtlepatterns.com/

thanks Vanessa! smiley

I'm quite fond of textured things but I do also love non-textured things as well. I've noticed that I lean towards textured papers more than textured elements and clusters but there are some textured elements that I like as well. I agree that stickers and vectors don't need much texture and I like that; I like when they look like real stickers. If I download something that doesn't have texture, most of the time I will add texture to it.

Thanks Vanessa, what a treasure trove of pattern textures!:)

I just checked out plaintextures.com Thanks for the info.

Awesome texture site - thank you.