Painter, cloning a photo into a painting

[TWTom]

Painter's clone features are basically Photoshop's art history brush on steroids.

In the original picture I made some hue and saturation adjustments in Photoshop, dropped it into Painter, then used the dry media settings in Painter, toggling the clone feature on and off to add "manual" touches as necessary.

Clarified description - DannyR

[TWTom]

re: Jeaniesa "I don't feel at all qualified to comment on art....You are obviously talented with a brush in your hand (unlike me), so I can only be impressed with your results! I like it."

Thank you for your comment. Can I put on the broken record now, or is it a digital loop these days? When you say I'm talented and you're not, that's almost certainly because you haven't practiced or played around with Painter as much as I have, and maybe haven't looked at some of the same instructional books.

I simply have a good background with Photoshop techniques and I'd say if you bought one book, buy Katrin Eismann's "Photoshop Restoration and Retouching". Second, I've probably spent 200-300 hours with Painter7 over the last month. Third, I stare at good, classic painting, mainly the Impressionists but I like a bunch of stuff. Fourth, maybe I've spent a good number of hours reading about color and art technique.

re: that you don't feel at all qualified to comment on art. I have a lot of sympathy. In the end you gotta throw out all the jargon and ask whether the artist succeeded or not. Is it any good?

I struggle with Photo Based Art sometimes. What are we all trying to do? Just make a weird copy of the original? A bad imitation of true watercolors or pastels? I'm still struggling. I think with photo based art we need to try to bring out something new and surprising out of the original photo, some new dimension of it that makes people think and probably makes them happy. I also think, like all art,
photo based art should inspire us to create even more---create more good, positive art.

Thanks, jeaniesa, and just remember I don't know much more about this stuff than you do, maybe just a few hundred hours ahead of you! Easily made up in just a few months if you want. You'll probably pass me on the straightaway!!

[jeaniesa]

Originally posted by TWTom
re: Jeaniesa "I don't feel at all qualified to comment on art....You are obviously talented with a brush in your hand (unlike me), so I can only be impressed with your results! I like it."

Thank you for your comment. Can I put on the broken record now, or is it a digital loop these days? When you say I'm talented and you're not, that's almost certainly because you haven't practiced or played around with Painter as much as I have, and maybe haven't looked at some of the same instructional books.

Well, that's definitely true. I don't even have Painter to play with and I've never taken an art class or even an art "appreciation" class. I think I do pretty well with photo restoration and retouching and my knowledge/practice with PS has grown exponentially the past year - but if I have to "paint" on more than blush on cheeks, I just freeze up. Mental block for sure, but I feel like I've still got enough to learn in the photography side of things. But, someday I'd like to take a painting class - specifically portraits - so I can understand how light falls and creates shadows on the face.

re: that you don't feel at all qualified to comment on art. I have a lot of sympathy. In the end you gotta throw out all the jargon and ask whether the artist succeeded or not. Is it any good?

I've been told by others that I have a good "eye". And I definitely know when something catches my eye vs. something that I just pass by. But if you were to ask me what about a piece caught my eye, I most often couldn't tell you - other than something about the "play of light".

I struggle with Photo Based Art sometimes. What are we all trying to do? Just make a weird copy of the original? A bad imitation of true watercolors or pastels? I'm still struggling. I think with photo based art we need to try to bring out something new and surprising out of the original photo, some new dimension of it that makes people think and probably makes them happy. I also think, like all art, photo based art should inspire us to create even more---create more good, positive art.

Personally, I like to try to bring something new out of the original photo. In fact, my best attempts have been based on photos which in terms of photographic principles were pretty bad, but artistic "license" made it fairly straightforward to bring out the subject I wanted to focus on.

Thanks for the encouragement,
Jeanie

[TWTom]

(jeaniesa):Well, that's definitely true. I don't even have Painter to play with and I've never taken an art class or even an art "appreciation" class. I think I do pretty well with photo restoration and retouching and my knowledge/practice with PS has grown exponentially the past year - but if I have to "paint" on more than blush on cheeks, I just freeze up. Mental block for sure, but I feel like I've still got enough to learn in the photography side of things. But, someday I'd like to take a painting class - specifically portraits - so I can understand how light falls and creates shadows on the face.

I know what you mean. I think I was pretty much the same way in being unsure to paint on faces or anything else for that matter. Here's a trick I used that really helped me learn: Let's say there's a blush on the cheek. Have the Color palette open in HSB mode. In Photoshop, sample the color (if I'm using the brush tool I simply press down Option (Mac) and it converts to the eyedropper), then I intensify the color buy boosting the saturation using the S slider on the Color Palette (or maybe play around with the B slider too to change the value of the color). Now go back to that blush and paint a little bit. I like to make heavy use of mask layers so I can erase or reduce my manipulation.

As you get better you find if you want to even change the H slider (hue) to warm or cool the color. For example, in the Anna pic, I think the original lighting on the face was more of a warm light yellow/orange. In Painter (and of course you can do the same in Photoshop) I selected a cool light blue and painted over the yellows to chill it down a bit.

Over time you get braver and braver to experiment, since it's really that you're taking the colors you already have, and manipulating them a little bit.

One more technique I love: Sample the color, and without moving the S or B slider, change the Hue to a new color and go right back to the exact same area, and drop in that color. For example, in Anna, I knew that often dribs and drabs of blue and green help give a nice feel to skin tones. I think if you look close, you'll see in some of the shadow areas, I've simply dripped in some green of similar brightness and saturation to the original color.

Jeaniesa, believe me, you're on your way if you're doing gentle Photoshop retouching right now. That's exactly where I was about six months ago, before I bought Painter. "Anna" is simply a severe retouch of the original photo with Painter's tools. But if you're pretty smart about Photoshop, you can do pretty much the same stuff (though I find it much easier in Painter).

There's very few good resources for Painter7. Get the Painter 7 Wow Book, which is a wonderful labor of love from Cher Threinen-Pendarvis. It looks like it took her a year to put together and maybe there were two dozen of us that bought it (yeah, yeah I exaggerate). The other great resource I found is a brilliant bunch of PainterHeads who reside over at critical-depth.com in the Painter forum. They are happy to share their deepest secrets and tricks.