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Step 1
Open Paint Shop Pro. Next open the photo you wish to add texture to. Now you must choose a suitable texture. Paint Shop Pro comes with a small set of textures and you can also find many free textures on the Internet. But the easiest and most creative way to find textures is to shoot them yourself! Simply take your camera with you wherever you go and take pictures of anything and everything that has a textured look, such as peeling paint, concrete, rocks, sand, wallpaper, wood, or fabric.
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Step 2
Once you choose your texture, open it as a new file in Paint Shop Pro. You should now have two files open. Switch to your texture file and select ‘edit’ --> ‘copy’. This action will copy your entire texture file into the clipboard. Next switch to your main photo. Select ‘edit’ --> ‘paste as new layer’ to paste your texture file directly on top of your main photo as a new layer. You may now close your original texture file.
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Step 3
Check your layers window over on the side to be sure that you have 2 layers: your base layer and your texture layer. Now you will need to manipulate your texture layer in order to overlay it properly onto your base photo. There are many ways to do this. You may choose to change the blend mode first. This can be found in the layers window. Depending on your version of Paint Shop Pro, there will be several different blend modes to choose from. Try each one to see what the results look like. You might also at the same time wish to change the opacity of your texture layer (0-100%). This will change how much of your texture layer you can see on top of your base photo. Once you find a suitable combination of blend mode and opacity, you can start to fine-tune your results.
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Step 4
There are two main ways to fine-tune your combined photos at this point. You may wish to vary the opacity of your texture layer in different parts, or you may wish to remove parts of the texture layer altogether. A quick and easy way to do this is to simply erase parts of the texture layer while that layer is selected using the eraser tool. However, this method is destructive, so you may wish to use a layer mask instead. A layer mask allows you to ‘erase’ parts of your layer by painting and it is nondestructive (you can paint parts back in after you've painted them out and vice versa).
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Step 5
After you have fine tuned your combined photos, you are ready to merge your layers and save your final image.
