Fine Art Painterly Images From Your Photos

By: Alex Morrison 

So, you’re thinking about unleashing your inner artist? Good for you! Old school photography can seem a bit limiting sometimes, with all those pesky rules – the rule of thirds, the rules of thumb, sunny 16 rule. Who needs rules! Your creative after all and we creatives are born to break the rules!
Fine art photography is one of those photographic genres that defies rules, bends and breaks them and in the process of doing so the photographer creates art. A bad out of focus image of a flower could become your masterpiece; a mediocre landscape can hang in a gallery! With a little know how, and a creative eye, fine art images are pretty easy to create.
In this article we’ll discover what fine art photographs are, how to develop your own artistic style, and a simple way to process your photos into art images.

But Is It Art?

So what’s the difference exactly, between a fine art image and any other kind of photography? Well, this is where a clear definition gets a little murky.
Here are some general parameters, so we can talk about fine art photography from a common perspective (excuse the pun). Art photography is printed, and hung. (Hopefully in a prominent place!). It can be used in decor, in homes and offices; or “art for art sake” in galleries and exhibitions. Fine art photos are usually presented and sold as limited editions.
Here’s a pretty clear definition I really like, from the Professional Photographers of Canada that covers most of the generally accepted requirements of a fine art image:

Fine art images may consist of unusual images, individual images or a series of images. The range of styles and treatments varies greatly, from the classic black and white scenes to more non-conventional images. In fact, conventional beauty, formal design and familiar subjects are often not components of fine art images and can include painterly effects, soft-focus, journalistic, snapshot type images, bizarre and erotic images and other unconventional approaches.
Fine art images are usually sold to individual collectors, museums and business clients. Photo Decor is usually the term used to designate a print hung to decorate a room, whether in a private home, an institution, a corporate boardroom, a gallery, etc.

All right, now that we know what we are talking about let’s find out about how to create these wondrous and unconventional images. For this discussion we’ll be devoting our exploration to painterly styles and effects – the coolest and easiest techniques to learn! Other fine art photography techniques will be discussed in future articles. So hang tough if your favourite style isn’t included here yet 🙂 And if you don’t like photographs that look like paintings don’t despair – this is only one way of so many ways you can create fine art photographs.

Finding Your Artistic Style

First, let’s look at classic fine art. I know this seems counter intuitive – how can we break the rules if we’re studying classics – didn’t they define the rules?! Well, yes, but…these historical styles and techniques give us powerful insight into the range of artistic expression that you can build on when considering painterly looks.
Since I’m a big fan of Sir Isaac Newton’s “..on the shoulders of giants…1” school of greatness, I believe you achieve success in anything by building on and learning from the achievements of others.
A great place to begin absorbing a fine art point of view is with the old classic paintings, from Goya to the Post-Impressionists, and all schools in between!
I adore works by Claude Monet, and much of my art photography style is of his influence (his picture to the right).
Not to be confused with Claude is Édouard Manet, whose use of colour in his still lifes also moves me deeply.
The great thing is you don’t even have to “study” these works, just look at them and notice the colours, the brush strokes, the compositions, the subject matter.
Are you inspired yet? Ok, here’s another artist for you to investigate, in case you want more examples than just flowers in vases! Look for works JMW Turner an 18th century water colour artist who changed landscape art forever.
He inspired this image of a reflection in a lake.

The Subject of Your Desires

If your aim is to sell your fine art images as decor, be sure that your subject matter is something most people would want in their homes or offices. Think about the context. Ugly doesn’t sell – no matter how artistically it is portrayed. But beauty generally does. Artistic treatments of flowers, landscapes, still lifes, abstracts and impressionistic figure studies are safe bets as subject matter. They seem to be almost universally accepted.
One of my most acclaimed art images – won several major awards – and one that everyone absolutely loves is “the Devils’ in the Details.” Someone loved it so much they bought it, but returned it to the gallery a week later because once they got it on the wall – it was just too freaky and disturbing!

If you plan on selling to collectors then usually any subject is fair game – some lesser known van Gogh paintings were of old shoes. Who knew!
But it’s YOUR creative interpretation and treatment of these subjects, whatever they may be, that creates the WOW factor. And it is here in your treatment and interpretation that you can break all the rules!
Viewing the works of artists who have gone before will expand your imagination and get your creative consciousness flowing for styles, subjects and different and unique ways to portray them. Once you have your image captured, you can then create a wild assortment of artistic and painterly effects in your post production processing…which is coming right up!

Creating Painterly Techniques in Post Production

One of the most flexible and fun ways to give your images a painterly fine art quality is to use overlays, underlays and textures, which you add in post production. As long as your favourite image editor supports layers and blending modes you’re good to go. If you get really expert you may even want to make your own textures and under/overlays to take full control of your final image. You’ll be rocking epic fine art photography.
Back in 2006 I was playing with a program called Corel Painter – it is a painting program where you can create all sorts of paint effects in a digital way. I had created an image in Painter using an oil paint “brush” and the texture and some subtle colours. Just our of curiosity I layered this image on top of a landscape and wow! the brush strokes came through in a most enchanting way – and so my own form of painterly fine art overlays were born! I use these a lot and make new ones as needed. But you don’t have to go to all that work – often using random images you have in your folders can be just as useful, as we will soon see.
Achieving a painterly affect in a photograph requires two main components in post production, usually a texture to emulate canvas, cloth, or some other base media; and at least one other texture or overlay to give it the image the look of something other than a straight-up photo – something like a painting! Depending on your initial image you may not have to use both these types of textures. In fact because there are no rules here you can stack multiple layers in a variety of combinations to achieve stunning images.
“Winter Garden” started out as this. A fine mess of dead and withered grasses in my garden in January!

And it was transformed to this, and went on to win several national and provincial awards for Fine Art photography:

And now finally – How do I do this?

First, take a stroll around the Internet and look for free textures. Not textures of wooden boards and bricks though – look for cloth and fabric textures. Also look for textures of brush strokes or that have a very fine pattern like rust, old concrete. Other photos that are out of focus, or that have primarily one colour or pattern such as frost or rain drops on a window also work particularly well.
If you’re not inclined to go on a treasure hunt right now, I’ve created source files for you! Here are the files I used for Winter Garden, to get you started!
(downloads) (warning: this is an 18MB download and will give you a zip file with a PSD file and some JPGs).
The idea is to underlay and overlay these textures and images with your base image using blending modes and opacity to alter the way the textures interact with the base image. Ready to get started?

The Process of Post Processing

In Photoshop or your image editor, open your main photograph – your base image – in this case if you’re using my source files, Image 0852. Double click on the Background layer in the layers panel to make your Background layer editable. It will be called Layer 0. Set its blending mode to Soft light.
Then go to File>Place and select the image 0853.jpg. Stretch it to fit if needed. This will become Layer 1 Change the blending mode to Hard Light.
Duplicate this layer, and set the blending mode to Luminosity, and change the opacity to 20%. Flip the layer horizontally by going to Edit>Transform> Flip horizontal.
Almost there! Now place Image 0775, this is a photo of frost that I am using as a texture and colour overlay – stretch to fit if needed, and then set the blending mode to color, and opacity to 49%.
Now we’re going to create the UNDERLAYS! These are layers that we will add UNDER Layer 0. How exciting!
So… place image 0870, and drag the layer to be immediately under Layer 0. Set Layer 0 to Soft Light.
Set your underlay layer to 53% opacity.
And finally we will add our last underlay layer by placing the texture, Image 0809. Well add this in 2 places, but first place it as we have done with the others, and move it to be the bottom-most layer in your stack. It will be Normal and 100%.
Now duplicate this layer (CTRL J) and drag the copy to be the top-most layer in your stack. Set it to soft light and 42%.
At this point you should save your file as a layered image. What do you think? Quite painterly, no?
Want to adjust some more? Awesome! You can now play with these layers, the order, the opacities, the blending modes and even adjusting hue and saturation of individual layers to suit your own style and your interpretation of withered grasses in the winter. You can add other textures you may have on hand or that you’ve found online.
With a few simple images, some inspiration from the Masters, and your own imagination, free from rules and constraints, you’ll be making fine art images in no time!

Beginners Guide to Creating and Applying Texture Overlays Using Photoshop

By: Lea Hawkins  

Adding texture to photographs was happening long before the invention of Photoshop and other editing programs. In the days of the darkroom, we would scratch negatives with pins, sand paper them, stain the photographic paper with fixer before exposing, layer two negatives on top of each other in the enlarger, or push our film ISO to increase grain. These days, with editing programs being our digital darkroom, we simply have yet another way of adding texture to photographs.

What is a texture?

In digital photography terms it’s simply another layer added to your photograph in an editing program, usually an image of some sort of textural surface, such as paper, wood, concrete, etc., but anything at all can be a texture. They can be photographed, scanned or even made in Photoshop.

Some examples of textures. A friend’s work bench, a close-up of my lamp shade, a mossy rock, 

fog from a smoke machine, and some very ugly carpet.

Why use textures?

With the right texture overlay, and application of it,  you can add an extra level of depth and feeling to your photograph. You can use them for anything – from adding a vintage or grunge look to your photographs, to creating fine art pieces.
One of the best uses is to rescue a photograph that just isn’t quite working. I’ve been told no texture overlay will save a terrible photograph. While this is true for the most part, sometimes it can transform an otherwise unusable image to something more promising.

A texture can transform an otherwise unusable image into something more promising.

Textures can be added to almost any kind of image. If you’ve ever downloaded a photography app for your Smartphone, you have most likely had them add a texture with the app’s built-in filters.

If you’ve ever used a filter on a mobile phone app, you have probably already had textures added 

for you.

Getting started

You don’t need to create your own texture to get started. There are many pre-made, free textures available on the internet. A quick Google search will bring up a bunch of free texture sites. But not all textures are created equally, or usable legally. You need to look for textures that are a decent size and resolution, a 200px/72dpi texture over a 3200 px/300dpi image probably isn’t going to work so well.
You’ll also want to make sure the texture has the right copyright permissions. Sites like deviantart.com have many stock textures offered free by their artists for personal use. These artists ask that you simply return the favor by sending them a link to the image you created using their work. Other sites like freetstocktextures.com offer their images copyright free for personal and commercial use, as long as you aren’t reselling the texture images themselves.

Creating your own textures

Creating your own textures is as simple as taking a photograph. Why do that, when you can download free ones? Because it’s fun, your work is then completely all yours, and you can tailor your textures to suit your images. For example; if you’re photographing skateboarders at a skate park, you could also gather some shots of the concrete they skate on, or graffiti around the place to create original textures that work with, and possibly add to, the story of your subject matter.

Textures can add a bit more of a story to your images.

The image above is of my daughter asleep after a day at the beach (many years ago) combined with texture of the water I took that day, to add to the story and memory of the day, and give the photo an extra dream like feel.

Create a texture with your scanner

Below is the first texture I created, one that I still use years later. It was created by scanning the bottom of an old baking tray. Scanning works well for textures of papers and other small flat surfaces.

Scanned texture from an old baking tray.

The baking tray texture was used in the image of the cello player at the beginning of this article, in combination with a manuscript image of the music she played on the day. I also used it in the image below; one of a series of images created in collaboration on album artwork with Canadian singer songwriter Sora. The texture was used to tie all the photographs in the album together even though some were taken by other photographers. Yet another use for textures!

Textures can be used to tie a series of images together.

Create a texture in Photoshop

You don’t need to understand complex Photoshop processes to create a texture quickly and easily. Here are a few simple steps to create a basic texture in a few minutes:

1. Open a new file the size and resolution you require
2. Brush around a couple of colors
3. Add a Render Clouds filter
4. Adjust levels for a bit of contrast
5. Add a vignette and a color filter

Paint in some colors, add Render Clouds Filter, some contrast, then some colour and vignette. Easy!

Instead of a Render Clouds you could use the Blur Tool to swirl your colors around, or try some of the other filters in Photoshop to get different effects. I tested it out on what was originally a rather terrible photograph of this orchid.

The texture, plus a few color adjustments and a warming photo filter, and it’s a whole different image.

While it does look a little like something you might see on your Facebook stream with a positive affirmation written across it in an awful font, it took me less than five minutes to do for this demonstration to show you how simple it can be to create a texture from scratch.

Applying your texture

It is really very easy to apply your texture. There are some more technical articles on adding textures here on dPS, but here is a quick guide to get you started.
Click and drag your texture thumbnail in the Layers palette over onto your original image. Your texture becomes layer 1 in your original image’s Layer palette. Choose your level of transparency with the Opacity Slider and use Free Transform Tool to move the texture about. Turn it around, enlarge or stretch. See where it sits best.

Then it’s simply fine tuning the Opacity, maybe putting Eraser Tool on a low opacity and painting out unneeded parts of the texture. Alternatively use a layer mask to paint out some areas, as well as back in, if you accidentally paint out too much.

Have fun with it and experiment. Try a few different layer blend modes, add multiple textures, or add the same texture image a few times, perhaps with each layer having a slightly different hue. There are no rules.
Have you created a texture that you love? Share it and its use (your images) in the comments below.

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How to Use Textures to Enhance Your Photographs

In this post Patrick Dean from NeutralDay.comexplores how to use Textures to enhance an image.

If you’ve spent anytime at all exploring sites like Flickr, I’m sure you’ve notice a good many photographs that have a certain “vintage” look to them, a patina if you will. There are many variations to this theme, ranging from simple toning to full blown distressing of the photograph complete with film like grain or scratches and surface variation resembling an old or imperfect photo. Up till now you might have thought that achieving this look was difficult and time consuming, but in fact it is remarkably easy, and it is done using textures.

What exactly is a texture? The term texture when used in photoshop refers to an image that is used  on top of your own image that when adjusted via blend modes or opacity imparts a “texture” on your image. The “texture” doesn’t have to be of a physical texture, in fact it could be nearly anything, including another photo. Generally however textures will be photographs or scans of old pieces of paper, fabric, a hand written letter, etc. But it could be a image of clouds, rain drops on a windshield, a bokeh pattern, bubbles, water reflections, and on and on. That’s the beauty of using textures, they could be anything and combined infinitely to create a wide range of different looks.

Of course this variation makes it seem a bit more confusing than it is, but to clear up any confusion I’ve provided a walk through on how to use a couple of textures that make a good photo into a very interesting photo. It’s easy to overdo textures, and I prefer to not stray to far from my original material, but you could take this is as far as you want with as many textures as you want.
For this we’ll be using Photoshop CS4 (any version will do, including Elements), an original image, and a couple of textures. To acquire your own textures you can scan or photograph your own, or alternatively, check out sources like flickr or deviantArt for literally thousands of free textures that you can use in your work. In this case I used a paper texture similar to this one (via flickr member: Feodora Umarov), and a bokeh texture available here  (via flickr member: laughlinc). Both are free to use as textures in your work under the creative commons license, but by all means browse around for further possibilities.

The Original Image

I picked this image because of the brooding mood of the subject and ample negative space. I really like the photo and the out of focus quality present, but it could use a little “enhancement”

Step 1

Open up your original image in Photoshop.

Step 2

Open up your texture file in Photoshop. Here’s mine, an old piece of scanned paper. You should now have 2 files open in Photoshop. Drag the texture file onto your original image file to add it as a layer. For CS4 users, drag the texture layer to the original image tab (if you’re using the tabs), until the original image is displayed, then let the texture file go on the original image to add it as a layer.

Step 3

Re-size the texture layer so that it covers your original image entirely. With the texture layer highlighted in the layers palette, use the shortcut command/control T to resize the texture layer. Press “return/enter” to finalize your resize.

Step 4

This is where the magic happens. We’re going to change the blend mode of the layer in the layers palette. Blend modes change how one layer interacts with the layer/s below it. In this case we’ll start with multiply.

Step 5

Notice right away we’ve produced a more vintage feel to the image. This could easily be one direction to go, but lets try another blend mode.

Step 6

?
Overlay helps to lighten the image, and though it’s too bright, I like this direction even more. The beauty of layers is that we can adjust their opacity and their positions.

Step 7

In this step I’ve duplicated the original (background layer). I’ll use this layer as a “texture” as well, in part to help tone down the final results. Move the original texture down so that it sits between the background copies.

Step 8

The result of the duplicated background layer placed on top of the paper texture and set to soft light blend mode at 84% opacity. There’s no science here, the fun part is experimenting with opacity and blend modes, and even layer order. But really all I’ve done is add one texture and change a blend mode and already it’s made a nice change. You could stop here, but let’s add one more texture.

Step 9

Open up your additional texture (I’m using a bokeh pattern here) and add to your layers by dragging it onto your original image.

Step 10

Here I’ve moved down below the background copy layer and the first texture layer. The blend mode has been changed to overlay with a 33% opacity. Again, this is the fun part so be sure to try all the various blend modes to get the look you desire.

Step 11

The hard part is done, now just some tweaking to dial in the look we’re going for. Here I’ve added a color balance adjustment layer in order to get the red/yellow tones I’m looking for.

Step 12

In this step I’ve added a couple of hue/saturation adjustment layers. One to address the excessive yellow, and one to lighten up the image.

Step 13

The final image. It has a wonderful tone and atmospheric quality to it, and I like the overall feel much better than the original. As I said before, it’s easy to go too far, but you can always go back into the layers palette and dial down the opacity of the various layers till you get the right “balance”. What’s great about textures is the final result looks more significant than the actual process. It’s not for every image, but the simple process of using textures can add some big impact to your work.
Patrick Dean is a photographer, graphic designer and editor of the photography news and reviews website NeutralDay.com

DIY: How to Create a Coffee-Stained Texture for Aging Images in Photoshop

By: Megan Kennedy 

As a kid, I remember coffee-staining scrap paper to create ancient maps that marked out treasure in the backyard. Nowadays, I’ve discovered that the same process can be great for photography projects too. With help from Photoshop, experimenting with textural layers is a great way to introduce an aged look to your images. But sometimes it can be hard to get a hold of quality textures on the internet. That’s where a bit of DIY comes in. By making your own coffee-stained texture, you can create seemingly aged canvases, which can then be applied to your images.

What you’ll need:

• 1/4 cup of instant coffee granules
• 1 teaspoon
• a damp cloth, sponge or paper towel
• a few pieces of white paper (I use plain old sheets of A4 copy paper. While copy paper does pucker when water is introduced to it, I think it adds to the overall aged effect. Plus, it’s less expensive than good art paper!)

How to coffee-stain paper

1. First, lay out your sheets of paper on a wipeable surface. I prefer to work on the kitchen bench.
2. Sprinkle some instant coffee on your sheets of paper – about a teaspoon per sheet.
3. With a damp cloth, sponge or paper towel, begin to press the instant coffee granules into the paper. As the coffee moistens, you can start to spread the granules around the paper with broader strokes. The more varied the strokes, the rougher the effect will be.
4. You can add more coffee and a little water if you need it. The more coffee you add, the darker the coffee-stained paper will turn out. You can even leave some partially-dissolved coffee granules on the page.
5. Once you coat the paper, place the sheets somewhere safe and leave them to dry for a few hours.
6. Sometimes the drying process can lighten the stained effect somewhat. If this happens, add more coffee and water to darken the paper further.

Here’s my result:

How to apply coffee-stained textures in Photoshop

Once your coffee-stained paper is dry, scan or photograph the page/s and save the files somewhere handy on your computer.
Next, open an image in Photoshop. This will be the image we’ll apply the coffee-stained texture to. I went with the image below:

1/100 of a second f/4.5 ISO 100

With your chosen image open, add a Black & White Adjustment Layer by clicking the Black & White icon in the Adjustments panel (the names of the icons appear when you rest your mouse on them).
If you can’t see the Adjustments panel, select Window from the top toolbar and then click on Adjustments. The Black & White Adjustment Layer will non-destructively convert your image to black and white.


Toggle the Black & White Adjustment Layer settings until you are satisfied with your image.
Next, with the Black & White Adjustment Layer selected in the Layers panel, click File from the top toolbar. Then select Place… and locate and select the coffee-stained image file.
The coffee-stained texture layer will be imported over your original image.

If needed, adjust the dimensions of the coffee-stained image by dragging its corners to completely cover the entirety of the canvas.
With the coffee-stained texture selected in the Layers panel, click on the Blending Modes drop-down menu located within the layers panel. Set the Blending Mode to either Overlay or Soft Light. Overlay is a bit harsher in contrast than Soft Light, so test out both options before settling on one.


Next, select the coffee-stained texture layer and click on the Curves icon in the Adjustment Layers panel. Adjust the Curves settings until you are happy with the overall contrast of your image.

At this point, you can refine the Black & White Adjustment Layer further or even add additional coffee-stained layers to increase the intensity of the aged effect.
This is my finished result…

Here are two more images I’ve attempted to age a little with the same method…


What do you think? Up for a cuppa? If you’ve given the coffee-stained texture method a try, be sure to share your results in the comments!

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