NZPhotographer Issue 53, March 2022

Get Your Grunge On
by Fairlie Atkinson
Have you wondered how some photos manage to
give off a grungy vibe? Or have you looked at a
photo and asked yourself how they have managed
to create texture in a shot that would not ordinarily
have it? The answer is by using editing software.
Grunges are different to filters as they are an overlay
that you pop onto your photo during editing. A filter
is what you use when you’re shooting. If you’re of
the Instagram era this may confuse you, as you add
the filter after you take the shot. What this is doing
though is creating a photo that looks like it has been
shot with that filter already in place on a camera.
A grunge is an overlay to provide a textured look to
your images.
GETTING STARTED
It’s quite easy to find copyright free grunges online.
If you go to WikiMedia Commons and type ‘texture’
in the search bar you will find a plethora of textured
free images of wood, grains, and grunges that
are free to use. You can also find free grunges on
Pixabay and other commercial sites but you have to
sign up and then the emails don’t stop!
I downloaded a brown distressed concrete grunge
from WikiMedia Commons and popped it onto an
image I took of a gannet at Cape Kidnappers. The
grunge enhances the yellows and browns in the
original image and gives it a nice texture, not only
does it look good on the screen, it will print really
nicely on a canvas for a unique piece of home
décor.
Here you can see I have popped the grunge as a
new layer over the gannet. I will enlarge it until the
entire bird is covered by the grunge, then choose a
blend mode, change the opacity and then erase
parts of the grunge that cover the bird that I don’t
want. We will look at this process in more detail in the
next part of this article.
62 March 2022 NZPhotographer