Diagonal-Line Blending

We will learn how to make a simple texture and blend it with our base image without changing the color or light intensity. This tutorial is fairly easy and I am sure even beginners at using Photoshop can follow through without much trouble.

Step 1: For our example, please use the following image. I have already adjusted the color and contrast from the original photo. But if you are not satisfied with the changes, you can tweak it however you like before continuing.

Step 2: So we will first make our texture – very, very, very easy to make. Duplicate the image and do Filter --> Blur --> Motion Blur. Change the angle to –45 degrees and the distance to 400 pixels.

Step 3: Now change the blending mode of your texture to Hard Light. You should have the following effect:


Step 4: Duplicate your texture layer and change the blending mode to Linear Light. Then Filter --> Other --> High Pass and change the radius to 8.0 pixels. (Observe the changes to your image) Next, Filter --> Blur --> Gaussian Blur and set the radius to 2.5 pixels. Keep in mind that you can play around with these features and choose the radius size that you like better. The numbers I have here are just an example for you to work with for now.


Remark: As you can see, we have a bunch of really nasty-looking lines and we’ve also lost some of the color and brightness. Therefore, the next few steps are dedicated to bringing back the original image without losing the texture effect.

Step 5: Duplicate the original base image that you started working with and bring the duplicated layer to the top of the other layers. Change the blending mode to Pin Light. Then duplicate this image layer again and change the blending mode of the new layer to Darken.

Remark: In this tutorial, we are using an image that is bright and light-colored to begin with, so doing a Darken mode is most ideal. However, if you use a picture that is generally dark, you will see that the Darken mode will not make any difference and instead, you should use the Lighten blending mode.


Step 6: Lastly, duplicate your base image again and bring it to the top of the other layers. Set the blending mode to Color. This is your finished product. Compare it to the original image you started with and see that not much of the image has changed except several added diagonal lines.