Can You Get a Painting Look With a Photoshop Action? Jack Davis Can!

This week I am just doing a post on Jack Davis’ Painting Actions Sampler Beta 2013. I really enjoyed a video called Adobe MAX: Expressive Painting in Photoshop that Jack Davis (Photoshop Hall of Famer and very creative artist besides being the Wow Book guy!) did for the Adobe Max 2013 recently. This is a very entertaining video and I recommend your listening to it to get some new ideas for giving your photos a painterly look. He directs you to his Jack Davis Wow Facebook page where you can download several items including the action used on these images after Liking his page (see Freebies). The last image covers the Mixer Brush techniques from the video. The Pattern Stamp Tool and Art History Brush Tool techniques are in the PDF files downloaded from the site. He provides all the brushes, patterns, textures, pdf’s, and actions to use the tools he teaches so this is definitely a resource you will want to get.

Above is the Clansman Restaurant in Loch Ness, Scotland. I love the understated way this image looks even with this filter. Not so obvious you are using the Oil Paint Filter. In Lightroom 5 the Lens Profile, Chromatic Aberration and Upright Perspective checkboxes were ticked. Next David duChemin’s Lightroom preset Mid Tone Lift + Vignette + Clarity was applied before bringing image into CS6. This gave the whole image a little bit of a vintage feel. The first thing you need to do is to convert you image to an 8 bit file if is not already one by going to Image -> Mode -> 8 Bits/Channel – otherwise some of the filters in the action will not work. You also must right click on the image and select Convert to Smart Object as all the filters line up underneath your original image. (In Lightroom you can select Open as Smart Object in Photoshop to save this step.) I noted that you can actually duplicate the image and use the top layer for all the action work. This can be handy if you want to mask out some effect and pick up the image below. After that, the Davis Painting Actions Sampler-Beta 2013 needs to be loaded into the Actions Panel and Wow Smart Object Painting 1 selected. Run this action – five filters will line up in your Smart Object: Median, Oil Paint, Emboss, and two Filter Gallery (Rough Pastel and Texturizer). If you do not like any of the results, you can go back into any of the filters and adjust them until you get the effect you like. It is very quick and gets you a very good start going towards a nice painterly effect. I have already covered the Oil Paint Filter in Photoshop CS6 (and for CS5) in a previous post (see my Photoshop’s CS6 (and Pixel Bender’s) Oil Paint Filter blog), check it out for how the different sliders work for this filter. The close up below tries to show the nice painterly effect that is created. For more info on how this image was processed, see Image 1 notes at end of blog.
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This old building in Oahu, Hawaii, used the action twice on the image – it was first run as the action is set up with the Oil Paint Filter settings left alone. The second time it was run, the sliders were changed to these settings: to Stylization 1.39, cleanliness 4, Scale 10, Bristle Detail, Angular Lighting 0, and Shine 0.35. Then a black layer mask was added and the areas where more detail was required were gently painted back in with a low opacity white brush into the mask. Definitely has more of the traditional Oil Paint Filter look to it. See Image 2 at end of blog for more info.
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These pink pentas were painted from a picture I took in my front yard. Basically this is a mega action called Davis-Mixer Paint SetUp-BETA that was run and the steps were followed. This is an absolutely genius action (if you listen to the video you get the background on it). You end up with 8 layers to paint on using the Mixer Brushes he supplies. The action includes layers called Rough Underpainting, Refine Painting Details, Final Highlights, Final Shadows, and Final Blending beside several reference and back up layers. See the notes for Image 3 at end of blog for more tips on how to use this action.
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The images above do not do justice to how the image really looks at 100%. The texture is very subtle on them. I am not near as good as Jack Davis is with his painting actions, but I am going to try to play with it some more as I see several possibilities to create some very nice paintings. I also believe incorporating the Mixer Brush technique from the video improves the final outcome. Definitely check out his video and also watch for him on CreativeLIVE where he gives free tutorials on all aspects of Photoshop, Lightroom and Graphic Design. I have followed him for years and still refer to a little book called Adobe Photoshop 7 One Click Wow – this is where I learned how to create and use layer styles. Hope you enjoy trying this little action – it really is a lot of fun to use!…..Digital Lady Syd

NOTES FOR IMAGES

Image 1: After the action was applied to the image, some clean up was done where a couple things looked funny. Next 2 Lil’ Owls (see my Tidbits Blog sidebar for website link) Color Bokeh Grunge Set – 5 was applied and set to Linear Burn blend mode at 94% opacity. In the layer style the This Layer white tab was split (ALT+click on the tab) and set to 194/214 – this took some of the white out of the center of the image. A Levels Adjustment Layer was added for contrast with the Midtones set to 0.71 and the Output Levels set to 41 and 255. A New Layer set to Overlay was used to darken the centers of the flowers and a few other places. (See my The Best Dodging and Burning Technique! blog.) The last step used my free SJ B&W Border Frame with the black color changed to one sampled in the image.

Image 2: Adjusted the Basic sliders and in HSL section several Luminance sliders. Also a Post Cropping white vignette frame was created setting the Style to Color Priority, Amount to +100, Midpoint 11, Roundness -100, and Feather 3, before opening image in Photoshop CS6. The image was converted to 8 bits/channel. A couple clouds were added on a separate layer using my free SJ Clouds 1 brush. This layer was set to 72% opacity. A composite layer was created now (CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E) and then duplicated so that I could run the action twice. The first composite layer was turned into a Smart Object and the action was run. Then the second layer was turned into a Smart Object and it was run. Then the Oil Paint filter was double-clicked to open up the interface, and the settings under the image were applied. A black layer mask was added to this layer and just the parts where I wanted more detail were carefully painted back with a low opacity white brush. The last step involved just adding a Curves Adjustment Layer to add a little contrast back into the image.

Image 3: This image actually froze up my computer while doing it – not sure if it has to do with the very RAM intensive Mixer Brushes, but be prepared for a bit of a slow down. The way the action was set up is so that you do not Sample All Layers which make the Mixer Brushes a lot faster. Only the Blender layer requires All Layers. A few tips I wrote down to help you do this type of image are:

1. The Eraser Tool was set to 50% opacity and 123 pixels. I found when something got messed up on one of the layers, it was easier to just erase it away and then paint over it the correct way. If you own a Wacom tablet, you can set up your pen so it will erase when you turn it upside down. I do this all the time.

2. At the beginning especially, keep your Reference for Tracing-Outlines on all the time and Turn the Reference for Tracing-Photos on and off as needed.

3. Use your Highlights layer to shape the edges of you image. The Shadows layer seemed too heavy-handed, but the Highlights really helped. By keeping your Eraser Brush at 50%, you can reduce the intensity real easy by flipping your pen.

4. I changed the patterns in both Pattern Fill Adjustment Layers in the action. I turned off the bottom Pattern Fill 1 Adjustment Layer and added French Kiss Studio 3 White Wash texture and used a Hue/Sat Adjustment Layer and Curves Adjustment Layer both clipped to the texture to remove color.

5. I found I had to go back to the Rough Underpainting layer to fill in areas that got covered up wrong several times. I really spent a lot of time working back and forth between all the layers to get the effect I wanted.

6. The last thing I did was to add a black layer mask to the Reference for Tracing-Photo and painted back in with a soft low opacity white brush any areas that had the wrong color or rough edges still.

7. Found a Curves Adjustment Layer was needed to add just a little contrast back into the whole image.

Digital Lady Syd Related Blogs:
Dr. Brown’s Painting Assistant Panel for CS6 and CS5! – uses a similar method to create a painterly look