INSPIRATION | ATMOSPHERE & GRUNGE

I am not a big technique lover. Usually I just scrap and go. But for this layout I was looking for a new way to give my photos a certain atmosphere. Not only did I want to give them a unified look, but it should also be a bit spooky anbd eerie.

These are my photos once I added them to the template:

 After looking around a bit I found the channel mixer. It mixes colour channels and lets you do all sorts of fancy colour tricks on your photos.

I wanted it for a tinted effect on my photos and played around with the sliders until I found a reddish tint which suited my pictures quite well

 Remember: If you are playing around with effects always use an adjustment layer instead of directly editing the layer. That way you can easily just delete the adjustment layer if you don't like the result without having to undo umpteen steps (if that is even possible - depending on your history settings).

Once I had my basic page...

 ...I thought, maybe a bit of a grunge texture would be a good idea. So I looked for an overlay and found a fairly grungy paper to work with from an old freebie "Destination Adventure". I love how papers can be used in different ways, you can use them as overlays, to add texture....

 I converted the paper to black and white (-> Image -> Adjustments -> Black and white)

and again played around with the sliders until I had a texture I liked.

 I used it as a clipping mask to all the photos, set the blending mode to Soft Light and reduced the opacity depending on the photo. And this is my finished page after adding a few more bits and pieces.

I would like to encourage you to try out some new tools that you hadn't looked at before. Even though you maybe don't know what they do (or are meant to do) by playing around with them you might find your new favourite tool.

Credits:
No Probllama Templates by Pink Reptile Designs;
Basically White Papers by Pink Reptile Designs;
Better Together Elements by Pink Reptile Designs;
Documented Date Labels by Pink Reptile Designs;
New Job Elements by Pink Reptile Designs;
Destination Adventure by Pink Reptile Designs (retired);
Fonts: Againtsrefresh, SSBaristaBluesPro)