In this tutorial you’ll discover how to provide a portrait photo a painted look, so it resembles a digital painting.
A well lit, high quality portrait photo will work best for this tutorial.
You can download the one I’ve used here.
Open up your photo in Photoshop, and go to Filter>Blur>Surface Blur.
The Surface Blur will allow you to blur smaller details whilst keeping the edges solid.
Now duplicate this layer twice.
Name one layer ‘glowing edges’, and the other ‘high pass’.
Click on the ‘high pass’ layer first and go to Filter>Other>High Pass.
A 20 pixel Radius should work best for most photo’s.
Change the ‘high pass’ layer’s blending mode to Overlay.
This will have given a soft contrast to your photo.
Now click on the ‘glowing edges’ layer and go to Filter>Stylize>Glowing Edges.
Use the settings shown in the image above, and click OK.
Set the blending mode to Screen.
This will add smooth edges to your photo that resemble brushstrokes.
Duplicate the ‘glowing edges’ layer, then select both layers and right click to merge them.
Re-apply the Screen blending mode.
Now we’ll blur this layer to soften the edges we’ve created.
Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur, and set the Radius to 1 pixel.
Next click on the adjustment layer button at the bottom of the layers panel, and choose Curves.
In the Curves dialog box, choose Green from the drop-down list.
Create 3 points on the chart move the left point up a little, and the right point down slightly.
By doing this we’ve given the shadows a green tint.
Next add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, and bring the Saturation slider up to +25.
Now add a new layer above all the others and call it ‘clouds’.
Go to Filter>Render>Clouds.
Change the ‘clouds’ layer’s blending mode to Screen, and take it’s Opacity down to 8%.
This will give the image a subtle mottled effect.
Finally select all the layers and merge them in to one.
Apply a Gaussian Blur set to 0.5 pixels.
