Photos Into Paintings

Filter Gallery

On the left is the original photograph, a fairly unoriginal and mundane snapshot of a stream outside of Woodstock, NY.

On the right is the same photograph, after enduring the following treatments:

1 Levels changed to 22, 1.09, 179

2 Curves with points added at 62,34 and 192,209

3 Rough Pastels: 22, 18, Sandstone, 66, 18 (top)

4 Diffuse Glow: 9, 6, 15 (middle)

5 Ocean Ripple: 7, 1 (bottom)

Is it better? Marginally.

What I learned:

1	That the Filter Gallery allows you to apply more than 1 treatment to a photo
2	That you can then reorder the treatments
3	That you have to click the new treatment button BEFORE selecting the type of treatment
4	That you have to select the treatment, then click the Trash Can. Every place else you can drag something to the Trash Can. Not here.
5	That there's no way to do blending modes inside the Filter Gallery and once you get out, it's all one layer. So forget blending modes and the Filter Gallery.
6	That you can overdo things easily in there.

Now, let's try this again, without getting carried away. In this edition, we tossed out the Ocean Ripple and the Rough Pastels (which, it turned out, were the biggest culprit in what I didn't like) and substituted a Sponge at 1, 252. It seems a little better, but it still needs something.

Yes, it was a frame it needed. So, I dragged out the trusty fancy frame from Lesson 1 Supplemental, resized it and added a color adjustment layer and it looks presentable.

Actually, with the vanishing point of the stream and the way the colors are kind of blotched together, we could pass this off as a discarded work by Gustave Caillebotte.

Yes, the frame is askew. Remember, this photograph was taken in Woodstock. Your point is?

Can't stand the empty space here, so I'll fill it with an appreciation of the way I've learned to take advantage of layer masks on adjustment layers. That allows me to change the hue, saturation and contrast over the fancy frame, without hitting the painting. Then on top of that, I added a Levels adjustment layer to bring out the highlights ever more.

Of course a frame — this is paintings. Paintings have frames!

Watercolor Effect

This is the original. I nearly rejected it because it's slightly out of focus. But then I realized that it didn't really matter in this case, because I'm just going to make it even more out of focus and I really like the colors, especially the difference between the blossom and the ground.

Am I happy with this? No, I am not! The delicate colors in the middle have completely blown out, the picture I'm looking at here bears very little resemblance to the colors I see in the picture I'm looking at in Photoshop.

This one I'm happier with, but still not thrilled. To get this, I did the Dry Brush (2,8,3) layer with Hard Light, the Cutout (4,4,2) layer with Luminosity, then turned off all but those two and created another Merged Visibles layer. I duplicated that for a filter layer and applied an Underpainting (17, 27, Bumpy Leather, 63,25, Top) in Linear Burn mode.

Finally, I added a Layer Mask and flooded it with White. When I put black on the layer mask, I began to lose some of the effects that I liked. So I left it white. Then I realized that a Layer Mask Filled With White is exactly the same as No Layer Mask at All and threw it away.

I like this one better because the subtlety of the colors in the center of the flower remains. The treatments have removed the distractions of much of the background stonage, while keeping the blossom from looking like it is existing alone in the void. The Bumpy Leather texture (found in my Photoshop Enhancements/Textures folder, put there on 30 Jun 1999: no idea where I got it, but I don't throw things away — obviously) lends a depth to it that I like.

Is it perfect? Not at all. But I think it's an improvement on an out-of-focus picture of a crocus taken by a person trying to learn how to use the macro mode on his new electronic camera.

But it is time to frame it.

Other Painting Effects

To begin with, let's start with a confession. I have never painted anything in my life other than interior and exterior walls. So I really don't have any idea of what I want to do with this, or what it's supposed to look like when I'm done. The terms Janee used in step 2 of the exercise are written using English characters and I can pronounce them, but as for being able to tell you what gouache or encaustic or tempera mean — welcome to Clueless Land. I think gouache has something to do with egg whites, but that may be something else: merangue, maybe.

So I will just play.

Here's what I'm starting with. The campsite I've been visiting virtually every summer since I was four years old is the site of an old forest estate. The Big House is long since destroyed; I've never seen it, and I can't find anybody in the Park Service or the village (including the Lake George Village Historian) who knows anything about it, other than it's gone.

In any case, this is the staircase which led from the Big House down to the lake. It's always been one of my favorite parts of the campsite. It's off to the side, there aren't any tent sites nearby; it's always quiet, always calmer than most any other place in the park.

This is the final product. I actually kind of like it, but I'd be hard pressed to tell what style of art it is. Instead, let's talk about each of the layers and what I think they add to the final product.

Starting from the bottom, we've got the texture, basically a texture file I had hanging around, but it went the wrong way. I wanted to emphasize the vertical, so I rotated it. I placed it under the photo and put the photo on multiply. That was way to strong, so I reduced the opacity until the effect was there, but not overwhelming. OK, so now the texture is on the photo; it's time to do the Merged Visible thing. The Angled Strokes filter sharpened things up a bit. It's hard to explain: When I turn it off, the whole picture darkens and the green at the top of the stairs almost disappears. So it stays.

The basic visual effect is the Watercolor filter layer. It kind of "droplets" the whole piece and takes a lot of the focus out of the trees at the top. But it lacked something. After about half an hour of fooling about and being unsatisfied, I decided to try the KPT Effects menu, which is unfair because not everybody has it.

There are altogether too many options on this to list, so I created a preset, and named it George's so I could call it up again if I wanted it. That's one of the nice features of KPT. But when I got back to the picture (KPT takes over the screen), the lens flare had completely taken over. I used the Linear Dodge because I wanted it to lighten the work, but it was still far too dominant. Hence the Fill = 36%.

I particularly like the way the green at the very top of the stairs is so bright. When I climb these stairs, it's usually like 85-90° F with humidity at about 70%, and the top always seems so far away. This work provides me with a bright goal, something to head toward. I've never really seen that in real life. In real life, my goal is a cold drink at the campsite.

Oil Painting

Once again, I feel out of my depth here. I've never done oil paintings and, although I've certainly looked at many oil paintings during my trips to museums, my concentration has been on the subject and the treatment of that subject, rather than the effect of the medium used on the presentation. So here goes.

This is the photo with which I started. The subject is a friend, Bob Engle, who is — obviously — a smith. Notice that in the original photo, there's this very bright white bar of stuff in a box of some kind above his hammer. This has to go; it attracts attention. In fact, the whole background above the coals has to go. It's unnecessary and so, was painted out before beginning the process.

I decided to leave the bricks, because Bob does not work without a forge. It would be a foolish thing for a smith to do.

As you can see from the Layers pane at the right, I used two layers of Art History brush, but then overlaid the original on top with Soft Light. These were merged into the MergeVisible layer.

The Merged Layers layer is mislabeled. That is the canvas with an adjustment layer above it, masked to keep Bob's face, the hammer and the iron, from too much canvas.

I added a Filter layer with a motion blur to give the hammer some movement. I cannot for the life of me understand what I meant to do with Layer 2 copy, but it has a Linear Burn blend mode. It doesn't make any difference if I turn it on or off. No clue.

Layer 3 is another canvas layer, with an opacity of 21%. I need to get in the habit of adding notes to the layer pane, I guess.

Finally, we have layer 2 copy 2. Again notes should have been taken.

In any case, the final is below, framed.

Yet Another Final

With Joanne's encouragement (and reminder that photo preparation is important: I had forgotten to do any of it), I got out the original photo of Bob at work. I had almost finished with the painterly effects when Guess Who stopped by to hoist a brew in honor of the Steelers' defeat of the Houston team this afternoon.

Do you find it odd that an ironworker would root for the Steelers?

In any case, he didn't like it. He said that the work I had done had obscured the most important parts of the photo: the glowing iron, the hammer and the anvil. So we went back to the original layer. Because I have learned from Janee over the course of these two courses, I had not touched it at all: It remained in its pristine state, ready for me to use the Pen tool to select the Important Parts, copy them (keeping the selection), going back to the top layer, and Pasting them In to the selection, exactly where they were.

He had another request. Because of the effects, the brim of his cap had nearly disappeared, but the red part didn't. "It makes me look like I'm wearing a fez, or something. Could you get rid of that?" So we framed it, using a frame created to look something like wrought iron and added some grey matting with a cross-hatch effect (done, of course, on an effect layer). You can't see much of Bob's fez now.

I understand that when you are doing a portrait, you have to accommodate the subject's wishes. But I swear, if he asks for any more changes, I'm going to charge him!