We know how it feels to look at an image and wonder how the artist used Mextures to create their final piece and sometimes it requires more than a formula code to understand their process. Because we enjoy learning as well, we spent some time with four of our favorite artists from four of our favorite photographic genres. We spoke with Omer (@omerika) about her incredible surreal creations, Ruth (@r.uthy) about her fantastic landscape pieces, Ellie (@elliepritts) about her amazingly colorful portraits, and Lily (@lvnatikk) regarding her brilliant composite work.. Each creative picked a piece of theirs and walked us through their editing process, allowing us all a glimpse into how they use Mextures to enhance their images. Have a look at the before and after images and learn along!

EDITING SURREAL WORK WITH OMER (@omerika)

I always love the melancholic feel of old film applied to photos, especially with portraits, so with this image it was all about mellow tones, washed out shadows, and low saturation. I started off with simple enhancements through the adjustments section of the app just to get the initial look to come together. So I turned up the exposure and contrast and turned the temperature all the way down because I wanted to get rid of the warm yellow tones. Then I wanted to add a little more brightness so I added Taffy from Vintage Gradients followed by Indigo from X Film blended in color dodge mode to brighten up the photo and desaturate it a bit more. I wanted to bring the main focus to the flower so I turned the highlights all the way up to keep the details showing through and added two layers of Natural Density on each side to make the flower pop. From there it was all about building the mood. I added one of my favorite Grit and Grain textures (120MM) but on a very low opacity because the photo is already filled with specks so I wanted to keep it very subtle. To achieve my desired film vibe I went back to the adjustments and played a little with the film presets. I decided to go with the PX-680 ALT preset because the overall look worked best for the style I was going for. To polish off the overall look I cooled it down a bit more with another layer of Indigo and added the Mustard overlay to even out the tones.

Formula Code - PJDYMUI

EDITING LANDSCAPE WORK WITH RUTH (@r.uthy)

Most of my mountain shots are taken around midday - just because that's normally the time when I reach the summit- and although it's fabulous to walk under a big blue sky and enjoy as many sunny days as we can in northern England, it doesn't always make for the best photos. I prefer slightly desaturated images and choose to place more emphasis on creating a certain mood using light and shade and Mextures is the ideal app for this purpose.

With this photo, my first priority was to tone down that blue sky using Winter Skies and changing the orientation to 3 so that the lighter tones were at the top of the image. With the addition of Barren from the Atmospheric pack I was able to achieve the early morning 'fresh' look I was after. I also wanted to warm up the mountain to really bring out the textures and provide a greater contrast with the distant low level background. 'Daybreak' helped me to achieve this, and further contrast has been achieved with a little touch of 'Vintage' gradient.

I love the different film presets and 9 times out of 10 I will use whichever one works best for the image. F-FORTIA was my choice here because it helped to enhance the light created in the new edit. Then I just finished up with a little tweaking of exposure, saturation and fade.

Formula Code - JQBWWTU

EDITING PORTRAIT WORK WITH ELLIE (@elliepritts)

This is a portrait of my friend Adora. I really like her attitude in this photo so I wanted to edit it in a way that helped convey that. I felt that with her sunglasses and the artwork behind her, I wanted to go with a mod feel with a twist. I'm a big fan of the X Film pack, so I started there with Mustard blended in exclusion mode. I wanted to play up the cool tones so the next layer I added was Idyllic, which added a nice blue overlay. Keeping in line with the urban feel of the shot, I went ahead and added Washington from the Emulsion pack. This brings a nice gritty feel to the portrait. For an extra splash of color and imperfection, I added Space Dust at the end. I really like how the yellow specks compliment the cool tones of the photo!

Formula Code - AWIRJTE

EDITING COMPOSITE WORK WITH LILY (@lvnatikk)

After combining these three images using Image Blender, I brought it in to Mextures for toning/coloration/texture/lighting. I wanted to create a mysterious and dark effect. Because the structure is standing solo the versatility of Mextures allows me to do just that. The Grunge texture gives it a perfect blend of the subject with the combined images making it a "clean" and realistic effect. I used lots of the Landscape Enhance overlays to separately colorize certain segments of the image allowing the other segments to remain untouched. The "Orientation" function in this edit is highly regarded.

I added Frozen because of the vignette that it produces while somehow keeping the subject (in this case, the building) in view. From Landscape Enhance I added the Dawn overlay. This texture helps me to soften the sky so that it blends well with the surrounding effect. I also added Dreary to add a little bit of red and warmth to the "cold" feel of the image. Ice Sunrise brings a slight purplish and soft color into the subject. Seaside enhanced the small details of the birds in the top lefthand corner of the image (I think the birds add a bit of mystery of the place). I added Winter Skies, Neutral Density and the F-FORTIA FADE film preset before I finished the image using the adjustment panel.

Formula Code - XEMYFGE

Make sure to follow along with the brilliant work from these four: @omerika, @r.uthy, @elliepritts and @lvnatikk.