Add Texture to a Photo

How to add texture to a photo

1. Open your photo: browse, drag it in or paste it.
2. Choose Choose texture image and pick the texture: a photo of canvas, paper, wood, concrete or fabric, a pattern, or a picture whose colours you like.
3. Pick a Mode and set the Strength. Your photo is not textured yet: that starts when you choose where, in the next steps.
4. Under Texture pattern, choose Repeat (tile) for a material and set the Texture size so the grain looks right, or One copy, stretched for a single picture. The pattern is used wherever the texture goes, brush strokes included.
5. Under Where to add texture, choose Whole photo, or limit it: Inside a box (drag the box), Inside a lasso (draw around the part you want), or Only where I brush (start with no texture and paint it on with the Apply texture brush).
6. Touch up with the brushes: Erase effect takes the texture away where you brush, and Restore effect brings it back. They change only the texture, never your photo. A box or lasso has a sharp edge; for a gradual one, brush along it with a Soft edge. Undo stroke and Clear strokes edit your brushing before you apply. Remove texture takes all of it away and shows your photo as it was.
7. The photo shows the result as you go; nothing is kept until you choose Apply. Everything you see is then written as one step, and Undo takes it back. Then save as PNG, JPEG or BMP.

Which mode?

Add texture detail is the usual choice. Your photo keeps its colours, light and shapes; only the texture's fine grain is added, the way a print on canvas or watercolour paper looks. It works by taking the texture's small-scale detail (the texture minus a blurred copy of itself) and adding it to the photo, so the texture's own colour does not tint your picture.

Blend mixes the two pictures with the layer modes found in photo editors. Overlay adds contrast and texture together; Soft light is a gentler version; Multiply darkens, keeping the darker of the two, like two slides laid on top of each other; Screen lightens.

Match colours gives your photo the overall colour and contrast of the texture picture, for example the warm tones of a sunset photo or the cool blues of a winter scene. It matches the average and spread of brightness and colour; it does not move individual colours around, so some pairs of photos work better than others. Lower the strength for a subtler change.

Inside a box, a lasso or your brush strokes, Match colours measures your photo's colours only where the texture goes, so the rest of the photo does not change the result.

None of these modes uses AI: they do not repaint your photo in the style of an artwork. Transparent parts of the texture have no effect.

Formats and size

The tool opens PNG, JPEG and BMP images, and HEIC photos in Safari on an iPhone, iPad or Mac, and saves as PNG, JPEG or BMP. PNG keeps transparency; JPEG and BMP fill transparent areas with the background colour you choose. The texture can be a different format and size from your photo.

Pictures up to 4096 × 4096 pixels are edited at full size. A larger photo can be edited as a reduced copy; a larger texture is reduced automatically.

Private by design

Your photo and the texture are opened and processed inside your browser. They are not uploaded to a Doodleden^™ server, and nothing about them is stored. Undo history lives only in this page while it is open.

Files are processed in your browser and are not uploaded to or stored by Doodleden^™. This site is funded by advertising; our ad partners use cookies and similar technologies as described in our privacy policy.