Step By Step Guide To Painting Realistic Landscapes In Photoshop – Turn any photo into a real picture in Photoshop! Learn how to use the Filter Gallery to combine multiple filters and effects to recreate the soft look of paint on a canvas. And most importantly, this effect can be achieved in a few minutes!
If you’ve browsed the Filter Gallery, you’ve probably seen a variety of effects and adjustments. Although filters help us perform a variety of tasks, there are also important tips to help them fit seamlessly into any workflow.
Step By Step Guide To Painting Realistic Landscapes In Photoshop
If you’re interested in creating highly detailed paint and watercolor effects, we’ve got you covered! Check out our tutorial on how to create a watercolor effect in Photoshop PRO to learn a more advanced, manual process for creating stunning artwork.
How To Turn A Photo Into A Painting In Photoshop
An important thing to remember is that many Filters are destructive, meaning they make permanent changes to the layer they are applied to. Since we want to work as non-destructively as possible (that is, work in such a way that edits can be adjusted, hidden, or removed without losing the original data), we need a way to solve this problem. .
First, we recommend duplicating the layers you want to add Filters to. This means you can always access the original, unedited layer if you ever need to back it up.
After duplicating the layer, we recommend right-clicking on the copy and turning it into a Smart Object. Smart Objects turn most Filters into Smart Filters. Smart Filters work like traditional layers; This means we can turn them off, change them, and even use a layer mask to make adjustments to give us more control over where the effects appear.
Once they’re done, you can add as many Filters as you want without worrying about damaging the original image.
Free Photoshop Tutorials For Graphic Designers
Let’s try to create an image effect using the Filter Gallery. For the best possible results, try to use photos that have similar characteristics to the style of painting you’re aiming for. Since we are creating a landscape, we want a frame that is relatively simple, but also contains interesting transitions between highlight and shadow. This helps us create an effect that stays true to the painting style we want to emulate.
Now that our new Smart Object is ready, it’s time to start applying effects using the Filter Gallery. Select the duplicate layer, open the Filter menu and select Filter Gallery. Photoshop comes with tons of different Filter options that are perfect for creating hand-painted effects. For the most realistic results, we recommend using multiple Filters to get the effect right.
For this particular look, we started with the Paint Smudges filter, which gives the details in the image the appearance of being created with paint drops. You can use the Brush Size and Sharpness sliders to adjust the effect to your taste. But don’t stop there after dialing the number! Adding different paint effects will help give the overall image a more natural, hand-painted look.
One of the best features of the Filter Gallery is that you can apply and stack multiple Filters at once and make changes to each one. So if we want to add more variety to our table, we can add another Filter on top of the Paint Spots filter. Now select the Angled Strokes filter and adjust the settings until you get the natural look you want. This Filter creates the appearance of individual paint strokes, which increases the overall realism of the effect.
Digital Landscape Painting Step-by-step Guide
Once you’ve completed the first round of filters, you can redo the background layer again and then repeat the process in a slightly different style. This is a great option if you want different areas of the image to look slightly different. In our example, we wanted the mountains to look softer than the detailed elements in the foreground. To do this, we increased the background layer, added the Paint Daub and Angled Stroke filters to get the look we wanted, and then used a Layer Mask to make this effect visible only on the mountains in the background.
It’s a relatively quick and easy process that can be used to create realistic painting effects for almost any photo! There are many filter options that we haven’t covered that we encourage you to try out when creating your own images in Photoshop.