On the first weekend of 2009, I decided to do something meaningful. So I chose to play around with Photoshop (not as if I’ve mastered it completely). My inspiration came from a tutorial from Digital Camera magazine’s April 2008 issue, which teaches readers how to create artistic, painting-like images from photos. I’ve slightly modified the steps so suit my liking. Here are the final products of the three photos that I’ve randomly chose to photoshop. All the painted photos are available in a larger resolution.
Chongjyn, painted.
Chongjyn, original.
The original photo was taken during an outing to a nearby supermarket after university orientation. Alongside with other seniors, Chongjyn brought we freshmen around to get our daily necessities. Thanks! Portraits photos are so much easier to photoshop because the human skin tone justifies the use of a warmer colour.
What I did: Using layer mask I selectively revealed the face (surface blurred in advance so that it contains less details). Faint paint strokes are visible in the air and on the tee, and a canvas texture is overlayed over the entire image to give it a painting feel.
Adeline with Ben & Jerry's ice cream, painted.
Adeline with Ben & Jerry's ice cream, original.
This photo of Adeline, a friend of mine hailing from the same country as me (Malaysia, and no, we don’t live on trees!), was taken during a club outing to Sentosa Island. The sun was exceptionally mean that day and we’ve decided to get ice cream from Ben & Jerry! We settled for Smores, which is basically chocolate + nuts and everything nice. We spent the next 15 minutes struggling to finish the ice cream as it melted under the tropical afternoon blazing hot scorching sun.
What I did: I repeated the same steps as the previous painting, but also isolated the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and increased the saturation, to give it more emphasis and visibility.
Coral in hand, painted.
Coral in hand, original.
This photo was taken during the International Coastal Cleanup (Singapore), on the 20th of September 2008. As a person passionate about the environment (actually I have no qualms being labelled as a tree hugger) and a member of my univerisity environmental group, Earthlink NTU, I participated in the event doubling as a photographer. For that year we were in-charge of a 100m stretch around the Kallang Basin, but we ventured beyond that to gather more trash. During the process we found a piece of dead coral on the sand. I took it back to my room, cleaned it with a toothbrush and then sun-dried it. Now it sits happily on my desk as a paper weight.
What I did: After painting in the hand, I adjusted the opacity of the pen and starting painting halos around the hand to create the fading away effect.
On a side note, I’ve just upgraded to WordPress 2.7. I actually have it installed locally (thanks Nick for writing a very useful tutorial on how to get it done) for testing purposes, but due to some plugin incompatibility I can only wait until the authors release a WP2.7 compatible version. The upgrade process is rather painless and quick, but be sure that you have to preserve all .htaccess files in your folders, to prevent any possible 500 Internal Server Error message from flying right into your face. It is also highly recommended that you deactivate all plugins before starting (not to mention cross-checking the list of compatible plugins) and backing up your MySQL database just in case. WordPress codex has a comprehensive article on how to upgrade your WordPress.
Have a great week ahead everyone!
good try dude…
i hv no photoshop…LOL
maybe after i get a new CPU
Check out Kun’s latest blog post » Broga Hill
pretty cool effects :) Photoshop never fails to make me happy. LOL. Happy new year and a wonderful year ahead, dude.
@Kun: Oh dear, what happened to your photoshop and your computer? I hope you can use it someday soon – I couldn’t live without photoshop! For the moment being, you might want to use Gimp as an alternative. Although I do not quite like the GUI, it’s still better than Paint :razz: that was when I reformatted my laptop and didn’t have the Creative Suite DVD with me.
@letti: Thanks Letti! Happy new year, and may you have a great year ahead! I hope the winter there isn’t freezing cold! Take care!
These have come out really great. I was actually just in photoshop a week or two ago trying to come up with a decent, EASY paint effect. It was all on my own and I was just experimenting. I LOVE experimenting :-p Besides, isn’t that where the good ideas come from anyway?
Mmmm. That ice cream sounds good right about now ;)
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nice experiment with the photoshop…i use WPAU for upgrading my WP…easy as pie !
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nice and good thinking on the coral ;)
Wow, the painting looks so alike to the photo! The effects created are pretty cool :)
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@Jay: Thanks! I love playing around with photoshop in my free time, and recently I’ve been exploring different filters with different blending mode to see their effects. I’m hooked to layer masks too! They’re such a joy to experiment with. Yea, I cannot agree more with you that skills and ideas come from endless experimenting and practising. The ice cream is sinful, haha!
@|1f34|-|1r3: Thank you! I did consider using WPAU for upgrading my WordPress installation automatically but after a botched try (which also vapourised my database), I’ve been sticking to manual upgrades. On a side note, manual upgrades are not as tedious as previously thought… maybe not the wp-includes folder heh.
@med: Oooh which part of it fascinated you?
@Wendy: Haha that’s for sure, since I painted over the original photo after applying some simple effects, teehee! Good luck for the competition anyway!
Nicely done! Great paint styling… though I dunno if it’s something that I like personally. However it seems that only the surrounding areas other than the main focal point of the pictures are “painted” but the main feature of the picture isn’t so it throws it off just a tad bit.
Congrats on finally upgrading to 2.7! I know you were worried about that for a while with the plugins not being compatible with the latest version of WordPress. I’m surprised really that they’ve begun working on 2.8 already.
@Destiny: Yea that’s one point I’ve got to work on. The photorealism is a little too great to be a painting :)
I wasn’t particularly worried of plugin compatibility since I’ve cross-checked all my plugins against a list of WP2.7-compatible plugins. I’m more worried of the database upgrade failing halfway or some 500 Internet Server error message due to wrong file permissions.
Yea, it’s surprising that they’re working on WP2.8! A lot of people have been complaining about the very frequent updates and new dashboards design they have to deal with, but I guess the automatic update feature can shut at least half of them up :razz:
cleaning it up and using it as a paper weight…nice idea ;)
@med: Oh :) I have to attribute that to my aunt! She got this habit of collecting dead corals when she visits tropical islands and she’ll clean them and sun-dry them to make them gleam in white, heh. I think I’m getting some sandpaper to smoothen out the bottom of the coral because there are still some sharp edges underneath that keep puncturing my paper.
It’s very nice, I like the one with the hand. Which tutorial are you using? Mind to share? I would love to try it out too. ;)
Wordpress 2.7 is good, I like the new admin panel but it’s slower than before and yes to the plugin compatibility. But most of the plugin authors have updated theirs so… I have 1 or 2 incompatible plugins. I need the quicktag plugin desperately :(
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@Dayna: Hey there! I guess that’s the most painting-like one in the post… I have to admit that the painting effect isn’t that convincing, heheh. I adapted the steps from a tutorial posted in a magazine, and I would love to share but I’m not sure if sharing the steps will mean copyright infringement. I might be writing a brief tutorial on the painting effect, but it might take a while.
WP2.7 is lovely! I like their new compact dashboard design and their revamped new post page. It does load a little slower than WP2.6 but the lag wasn’t so bad to ruin the whole experience. What does the quick tag plugin do anyway?
@teddY: Oh, I think it might cause some copyright problem. I shall wait for your tutorial then. :)
The quicktag plugin adds those additional shortcut codes on the top of the textarea in the post page, like the b and i tag. I wanted to add those frequently used tags which doesn’t come with the default quicktag. :(
It’s tiring to keep retyping all the HTML codes everytime I wanted to have a heading or something in my post.
Check out Dayna’s latest blog post » Something sad, something funny to share
@Dayna: Yea. I think I will just publish the modified steps and give due credit to the magazine, heheh.
It’s sad that the Quicktag plugin is only compatible up to WP2.3.2 (as seen on the WP plugins page), but I think I can work up to WP2.6 untill WP2.7 rolled out a revamped and improved code for the editor. Anyway, you use the <b> and <i> tags? I would recommend using <strong> and <em> instead because the new XHTML standard has deprecated the <b> and <i> tags (although still supported)
For the headings, there is actually more buttons to the WYSIWYG editor – just click on the rightmost button that has coloured boxes/dots in it or press Alt + Shift + Z, and it will display a new line of advanced tags like heading, font colour and etc.
@teddY: Yup, just wondering.. was that a Photoshop magazine or those designing magazines?
I need that plugin badly because I’ve got some customise coding to use in my post. I use the strong and em tag but on the original quicktag in write post, they put it as b and i on the buttons. :P
Mine doesn’t use the WYSIWYG editor because I’ve some PHP codes on some pages and it might break the code if I turn that on, so I always off it, that’s why the quicktag plugin is very important. I wonder why no one is updating the plugin when it is supposedly very popular and useful.
Check out Dayna’s latest blog post » Something sad, something funny to share
@Dayna: Hmmmm I wouldn’t have the guts to pick up a Photoshop magazine – the portfolios and works inside are so good that I feel so ashamed of my incompetence :P the tutorial I was referring to was published in a photography magazine, namely Digital Camera Magazine. Their tutorials are simply and not so design-centered since they’re catered towards photographers instead of designers.
Speaking of the WYSIWYG editor, I can understand your frustration when it comes to it automatically removing certain tags (and zapping php ones as well). Sometimes I am forced to switch to the usual HTML editor for compatibility reasons and to stop the editor from messing up with my code.
I hope the plugin author releases an update soon!
cooooooool! i like the rocky pic =D wahhaha ok that one looks like a painting the most =)
one thing, ahhh you buy digital camera mag too?? *high5*!!
whats the first issue u bought??
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@sue: Yea, it’s the least photorealistic one out of all the three! I have to admit the first two look a little fake. I didn’t buy the magazine… I just read the tutorial and jotted the important steps down on paper, hah.
I’ve never bought a photography magazine before because they’re so expensive. I will just go MPH bookstore and browse through them, searching for inspirations and stuff.
Nice photoshop tips,but the lighting kinds of give the effect away, imo.