In many texture/photo montage instances, the texture is desirable but the color it imparts to the underlying photo is not. There is a simple way to drain the color from the texture while leaving the photo’s color intact. In this rain lily example, I love the coffee tones surrounding the flowers…
…but I want to blend this wonderful rust texture from Photographers’ Textures Collection Five with the flower photo without affecting the lovely coffee tones.
Overlay blend mode does a marvelous job of blending the texture with the flowers, but it allows the texture to corrupt the color.
To fix this, ensure that the texture layer is active and click on the Black & White adjustment layer icon in the Adjustments panel. At first, this drives the entire scene to grayscale.
To clip the Black & White adjustment layer into only the underlying texture layer, choose Layer>Create Clipping Mask. Notice how the original color of the photo now shines through the intricate details of the texture.
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You can do the same thing by simply changing the blend mode to Luminance. The color is not affected and it eliminates the need for another layer.
Should have added “on the texture layer” after Luminance.