donmikes Loc: Doylestown, PA

I would like to learn what techniques others use in Photoshop Elements (NOT Photoshop) to make a photo look like an oil painting. My experiments with the various filters as well as with many of the techniques demonstrated on YouTube have usually produced outcomes that look like bad photos -- or really bad paintings. (I have Elements 15.)

Linda From Maine Loc: Yakima, Washington

Is there anything in the guided edits tab? I've only peeked in that area once as I'm usually in "expert" mode for working with layers. Which filters did you try - the ones in the drop-down menu at top? Often the adjustment sliders in the filter window can produce more pleasing than the default one-click.

How much have you worked with the specialty brushes? How about layers? Can you explain more about what has not worked for you?

If you are interested in other software (free), from a PP Forum topic I found:
https://www.mediachance.com/dap/ (Dynamic Auto Painter)
and https://fotosketcher.com/


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E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

Question: What aspects of an oil painting are you trying to imitate or simulate? For example, texture, canvas or linen slabs, brush strokes, glaze, etc.?

If you would post an image that you want this special effect applied to, I may be able to provide you with a simple method.

R.G. Loc: Scotland

Can Elements work with plug-ins? If it can there's a wealth of possibilities for that kind of effect. If they aren't free they shouldn't be prohibitively expensive.

Linda From Maine Loc: Yakima, Washington

Yes. I have the older Topaz Simplify and Topaz Detail + Nik Collection. I use Nik more than the "regular" stuff in PSE

R.G. Loc: Scotland

Re working with what you have, there are three main differences between photos and paintings that are worth concentrating on. One is that brushwork produces distinctive, even pronounced edges. Another is that paintings usually don't have the wealth of microdetail that photos provide, so small detail is expendable for a painterly effect, especially the non-critical stuff. Third is that paints and brushes aren't particularly good at reproducing gradations of either colour or light - it can be done but typically some subtleties are lost in the process. These characteristics can be simulated using basic editing techniques.

Another obvious difference is that paintings often have evidence of the brushwork. That may be hard to reproduce just using basic editing techniques, but that's where the filters and plug-ins come in.

E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

I have to agree and disagree about your observations on detail in paintings. Of course, there are too many styles, periods, fads, eras, schools, types, and techniques of "paintings" and painters to list here. In short, you can't paint all of the paintings with the same brush!

In learning my craft in photography, especially portraiture, I studied the work of many classical and modern (painters) artists. There is an enormous range. There are, of course, impressionistic paintings with little or no fine detail. Some are painted with coarse brushes or palette knives, some are entirely abstract. Many of the Old Masters, the Flemish painters, and the artists of Baroque period employed a method of underpainting, that is, building up colors and tones in many layers and enhancing them with special varnishes. This yielded incredible detail and gradation of tone and nuance that would rival any photograph. Check out the paintings of Gainsborough, Vermeer. and Rembrandt. I have seen many contemporary paintings where I really had to look hard to see the brush strokes.

In my commercial work, I have made high-resolution copies of many paintings for lithographic reproduction and have had the opportunity to examine them under high levels of polarized light. I focused on the canvases, in the olden days of film, with an 8x10 view camera, an ultra-sharp process lens, and observed the ground glass under 8x magnification and oftentimes the derail was astounding, you could count the hairs on the subjects head! Sometimes there was no discernable detail and I had to focus on the canvas weave.

In any event, simulating paintings by applying special effects to photographs is kinda like synthesized music- it's kinda fun and nice but it ain't authentic. Depending on the subject, different styles can be applied that may seem appropriate or may be reminiscent of an actual style or period of art.

artBob Loc: Near Chicago

You make very good points.

For a serious photographer, I wonder why they would even want to imitate a painting. For the most part in the art world, "faux" is a bad word. To make a clay sculpture look like bronze, for example, or to try to make watercolor look like oil paint. Such fakery almost always comes off second rate.

If photography is a real art, and I think it is, making it fake being an oil painting makes no sense.

R.G. Loc: Scotland

Perhaps I should have started off my comments by saying "For the most part.....". It sounds like there were some very refined techniques for dealing with microdetail and gradations. What I had in mind was the problem most artists would have with reproducing fine textures and large areas of fine detail, as well as gradual transitions from one colour to another or gradual transitions of light intensity over large areas.

I agree that any attempt to fully synthesise the appearance of paintings is, for the most part not going to produce optimum results. But I also suspect that most people looking for a paintely effect will be happy to settle for a look that is "reminiscent" of the work of painters. I don't think they set out with the intention to deceive.

Soul Dr. Loc: Beautiful Shenandoah Valley

You might want to check out The JixPix suite of artistic software. They have a lot of different ones like oil painting, water color, portrait painting and various others.
Their prices are very reasonable and the programs are easy to use. Plus some of them let you define brush stroke sizes and depth and other variables.

Will

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

And I'll add -
https://fotosketcher.com/download-fotosketcher/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAWP-E9D2Xo&list=PLWTJZKNFDNNC_qtsdLP9A2BaZk495Oeee&index=12

Photoguy120

That long look back of time gives one perspective that might escape youth. Well before digital cameras and color film was marginal, the more elite portrait studios offered hand tinting with a varnish coating to hide the tinting pigment. Once dry a second coat could be applied with brush stokes in the second coat to imitate oil painting.

After color film was more refined, the heavy varnish coating with brush strokes was an offering to the print.

Then there is the painting on canvas with a photo as the subject. I have one of my wife from several years back. The first artist I approached was insulted as it did not express his creativity. The second gave me a quote immediately.

We were visiting a friend in California recently and a very impressionist looking painting was on an easel. The work had a certain familiarity. It was a painting of their daughter and mine done from a photo using only knives. The photo was from an iPhone photo printed at Walgreens.

ChazT Loc: Florida

Linda, Thanks for the tip about Fotosketcher. Neat effect when I applied it to one of my photos from Bass Harbor. May try the Somesville Bridge next

(Download)

one_eyed_pete Loc: Colonie NY

I would argue that there is no such thing as "FAUX" or fake art. Art, like music or taste only exists in the brain of the viewer and is manifested by how the perceived image makes us feel. We are all different. If a photographer/artist creates an image that emotes a reaction inside my brain I don't care what procedure the creator used to make it. I simply appreciate it. I do appreciate the painterly effect in the image above.

csparbeck Loc: Brunswick Ohio

I use fotosketcher all the time---it's great and it's free.