Now that we have our photo
sized as we would like, let's see if we can turn it into a digital
painting!
Your image will need to be
in 24 bit colour, so should it not be, (and if it's a GIF image
originally, it won't be!) go to Colors/Increase Color Depth/16
Million Colors. If your photo is too dark, too light,
needs some contrast enhancement or colour adjustment, you might
want to make a quick trip to Camp
Ratty before you get into some serious digital painting
- you might improve your photo so much you won't want to hide
it behind special effects!
Once you are happy with the
base image, go to Effects/Enhance Photo/JPEG Artifact Removal.
Okay, we aren't really going to use this tool to remove
artifacts, we are going to use it to smooth out the blocky areas
of colour. Set the Strength radio button to "maximum"
and the Restore crispness slider all the way to "0."
Click OK to apply the effect.
Now click on Effects/Noise/Edge Preserving Smooth. This
tool removes noise from the interior of sections of colour,
while keeping edges sharp. We are going to crank this
one all the way up to a setting of 25-30!
We could stop right here
and have a pretty respectable water-colour effect for our image
but let's see what else we can do!
Go to Layers/Duplicate. This
will add a new layer to your image, that is exactly the same
as the original layer. Do this twice more, resulting in
a total of 4 layers in the Layer Palette. If you don't see the
Layer Palette on your workspace, go to View/Toolbars/ and make
sure the Layer Palette box is checked.
You should see the Layer
Palette with 4 layers. I have renamed the layers for the purposes
of this tutorial. It's not necessary for you to do so,
unless you are compulsive like me! ;-))) Your layers
will probably be named Background, Copy of Background, Copy
of Copy of Background and Copy of Copy of Copy of Background.
(And that's not a joke, either!)
Turn off the top two layers
by clicking on the little eye-glass symbol to the right of the
layer title. (There are red X's through mine, because
I have turned them off already.) Activate the second layer,
the one directly above the Background layer, by clicking on
it's layer title. The layer title bar will change colour
like mine did in the image above.)
With this layer active,
go to Effects/Artistic Effects/Topography. This effect
will produce the "paint build up" look of an oil painting,
in combination with a couple other effects, and Layer Blend
modes. You can use the default setting of Width 20, Density
8 (if you've used the filter before and would like to reset
it to it's default setting, click on the Reset button 
.)
The Width value controls
the size of each "paint layer" applied by the effect.
Larger values make the "paint layers" larger.
If your image has lots of small detail and you want to
show more of that, keep the width value lower. The Density
setting controls the number of "paint layers." If
you'd like to decrease the textural effect, increase the Density
setting.
Click OK to apply the effect.
Set the Layer Blend mode to Screen by clicking on the
arrow to the right of the word "Normal" in the layer
title bar for the Topography layer. This will blend
the pixels of the second layer with the pixels in the Background
layer, resulting in lighter areas in the image.
Activate the third layer
(the one directly above the layer we just worked on) by clicking
on it's layer title bar. Go to Effects/Artistic Effects/Brush
Strokes. This effect will add the little brush strokes
one would expect to see in an oil painting. Again, you
can use the default settings here, or you can adjust them to
your liking. If the photo has lots of fine detail, like
my image, you might want to decrease the Length setting, and
the Bristles setting. There are a number of Presets to
try, too, which can be accessed by clicking on the arrow to
the right of the word "Custom" in the dialog.
Click OK to apply. Set
the Layer Blend mode for this layer to Luminance. You
can also adjust the opacity of this layer if you like, lowering
it to let more of the Topography effect from the layer below
show through.
Click on the top layer title
bar to activate it. Now we'll go to Effects/Artistic Effects/Black
Pencil. We'll use this effect to add some definition to
our paint. You probably won't want to use the default
setting here... try lowering the Detail setting to about 70,
and the opacity to 50.
Click OK to apply and set
this Layer Blend mode to Overlay. Voila! Oil painting
from photo!
If you'd like your finished
image to be slightly darker and more vivid, set your final layer
blend mode to Multiply or Darken. If you'd like it lighter,
try the Screen blend mode, but lower the opacity on the layer.
Save your image as a .psp
format file to preserve the layers, and then Export it as a
.JPG for display. If you'd like to display your image
like a properly matted and framed painting, set your background
colour in your Color Palette to the matte colour you would like
(I'm using white.)
You can now go
to Image/Add Borders. Check the Symmetric box to apply
borders of equal width on all sides of your image. If
you'd like to use a bottom-weighted border as a professional
framer might do, uncheck Symmetric and make the bottom width
slightly larger than the others.
Now you can add a frame.
Go to Image/Picture Frame and choose one of Paint Shop
Pro's built-in frames (or you can add your own.) If none
of PSP's native frames appeal to you, Joe Cilinceon has a very
nice selection of realistic wood and metal frames which you
can use in the PSP Frame tool. You can download those
frames at Nightingail's
site .
