Expert: LizaL - 1/6/2005

Question
hi Liza

I'm a photographer who's trying to achieve the
painting look to my images. This is some example:

http://www.photo.net/photodb/member-photos?include=all&photo_id=2816412

I have a very difficult time doing so. Would you please help me with some direction or advices.

Thank you so much.
::I'm using PS7

Answer
Hi Ike,

Those are some really cool photos! I like the treatements the photographer has used, and wish I knew just what he's done.

But I can give you a few ideas on how to achieve some different looks. What you can do is post back, and let me know if this is what you're looking for. If it isn't, when you post back, maybe you can be really specific as to what you need -- like a textured look, a watercolor look, high-contrast, etc.

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It looks like the photographer on the site you sent me has retouched his images heavily by doing some selective painting on them. Here's one way to do that:

1. Open your image, then go to the Image pulldown menu. Select Desaturate. This will make take all the color out of your image.

2. Then select the History Brush from the toolbox. Now when you paint over part of your image, you'll paint back in the original color -- so you could make a picture black and white, except for someone's eye color, for instance. Or you could have a completely black and white picture and paint in flowers, or anything else you wanted to draw attention to.

I made a quick little movie to show you how to do this:

http://little-works.com/all_experts/historybrush.mov

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To make an image very highly contrasted, open the image, then go to the Image pulldown menu and select Adjustments, then Levels. Hold down the Shift and Option keys if you're using a Mac, or the Shift and Control keys. Then click and hold the left input slider in the Levels dialog box. Slide the slider to the right, and you'll be targeting the darkest points of your picture.

Hold the Shift and Control (or Option on a Mac) keys and slide the right input slider to the left, and you'll be clipping the lightest points of your picture.

Bottom line, this is one way to bring up a high contrast in your image.

Take a look at this as an example:

http://little-works.com/all_experts/levels.mov

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Photoshop also has a bunch of different filters that will apply loads of effects to an image, all at once. Now granted these aren't real specific -- that is, the effects are all "pre-set," and you can't do a whole lot of specialized editing to different parts of your photo. But they can do some neat stuff.

In Photoshop 7, look under the Filter pulldown menu, and select filters from the flyout menu to the right of each category, like in this example:

http://little-works.com/all_experts/art_filters.png


Photoshop CS has all these gathered in a gallery where you can see them all at once. I did a little movie to show you some of the effects that they have on a photograph:

http://little-works.com/all_experts/art_effects.mov

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So take a look at these examples, and if they aren't quite what you wanted, post back. Then we can try some things using channels and adjusting color.


Hope this helps! Please post back if you need more information.

Lisa