Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. I’m going to show you how to transform your
photos into beautiful, impressionist paintings and then, how to create an action that will
instantly apply this effect to other photos.
This is an update of a tutorial I did quite awhile ago on an earlier version of Photoshop.
Before we begin, you can get the most current
version of Photoshop and Lightroom and 20 GB of cloud storage altogether for only $7.99
per month. Click the link in my video's description to get the discount. Find a photo you'd like
to use for this project. I provided this image of Claude Monet's impressionist painting as
our color source. The link to this image is in my video description or project files.
The first step is to crop your photo to a size and resolution that will give us the
best results from the filters we'll be using.
Open your Crop Tool. Clear any size that may be in the Width field. We'll leave it empty.
In the Height field, type in 750 px for pixels
and for the Resolution, type in 150. Go to a corner and drag in the crop's bounding box.
Drag your photo to reposition it. Continue to drag in corners to size it and position
your image until you're happy with the way it's cropped. Make sure "Delete Cropped Pixels"
is checked and then either click the checkmark or press Enter or Return to crop your image.
To fit it onto your canvas, press Ctrl or Cmd + 0. We're ready to create an Action that
will ultimately record all of our steps in creating the impressionist painting effect.
Click the icon at the upper, right corner of the Actions panel. If you don't see this
panel, go to Window and check "Actions".
Click "New Set". For the Name, type in "Impressionist Painting" and click OK.
We now have a new Action set. Open back the fly-out list and
this time, click "New Action". Click "Record". At the lower, right corner, you'll see a red
circle appear. This lets us know that it'll record each step until we click the "Stop"
icon to its left. Keep in mind, it'll record the steps, but not the time in-between the
steps, so take as much time as you need before each step. Make a copy of the layer by pressing
Ctrl or Cmd + J. Go to Image, Adjustments and "Match Color". The "Luminance and "Color
Intensity" are 100 and the "Fade is 0. Open the "Source" fly-out list and click the Monet
painting that I provided. If you don't see it in the list, it's because you need to open
it Photoshop as one of your documents that you can click on. Once it's in the Match Color's
Source list, click on it and click OK.
Make a copy of the layer and name it "Pointilize".
Name the layer below it, "Dry Brush". Make the top layer active and go to Filter, Pixelate
and "Pointillize". Make the Cell Size: 3 and click OK.
Reduce its opacity to 50%.
Make the Dry Brush layer active
and go back to Filter and Filter gallery.
Open the "Artistic" folder and click "Dry Brush".
Make the Size: 3, the Detail: 10 and the Texture: 1. Then,
click OK. Next, we'll adjust its brightness and contrast. Make the top layer active. Click
the Adjustment layer icon and click "Levels".
Drag the Input white level to the point where the histogram starts to dramatically rise
and drag the Input black level also to a similar area on the histogram.
We're ready to stop recording the action. Click the square icon
to the left of the Record button to end the action. Scroll to the top of the Actions panel
and to save space, collapse "Action 1". Let's test the action on another photo. Open the
photo and crop it.
Fit it back onto your canvas. Click "Action 1" and click the "Play" button.
Automatically and almost instantly, it applied every step that we recorded in the Impressionist
Painting action set. Since every photo has its own brightness and contrast characteristics,
we can finesse the Input levels to suit the new photo.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. Thanks for watching!