PHOTOSHOP WITH COREL PAINTER FOR TEXTURE

This week I have been really busy watching Creative Live and Jeremy Sutton‘s presentation called Intro to Photo Painting: A Creative Approach Using Corel Painter X3. Wow – had not realized all the things Painter could do. I have Painter XI and was able to learn a lot in spite of not having the newest version (on my major wish list now!). This week I am doing just a short post showing you a few tips on adding some texture from Painter into an image first processed in Photoshop. This is pretty basic info since I am not that well-versed in Painter yet, but I thought it would prove interesting all Painter user, especially those who have never used it much.

The violet image above was first cleaned up in Lightroom and Photoshop before saving a copy down as a JPG for Painter. Several brushes were then used in Painter: Painter 11 Custom Brushes by Mitkov Abstract 1 brush (these are a nice group of brushes that are a free download on Deviant Art), Jeremy Sutton’s “Jeremy’s Jittery Dabber” brush, and Fay Sirkis’s “Sea World Fan Blender” brush, along with others that were used in small amounts (more info on Fay and Jeremy’s brushes below). In Photoshop the Mixer brushes were used to do some clean up I missed in Painter and to add the text using Radium J font. The reflection of the violets was created by using the Clone Stamp Tool and in the Clone Stamp Panel, setting it to a 180 degree angle and Flip Vertical – turned out pretty cool. Just a lot of fun to create.

The Technique

With the image of the little gerbera above, I was happy with the bokeh effect, but was disturbed by how bright the bokeh was in the image – really pulled the eye away from the main focus, the flower. By taking the image into Painter, other color and blending could be done just to the background to soften the bokeh spots in the background by replacing them with some interesting texture. This was done by finding a couple brushes you like and alternating between sampling a color you want, painting on the background, and then blending the texture to soften somewhat. In this case it almost gave a shimmer to the background. I am still using a regular brush that lays down color and a blender brush which blends it in. Now this could be done in Photoshop with the Mixer Brushes, but Painter has so many more brushes to choose from that it is easier to get some pretty nice textured results.

Much more was done in Photoshop in this image – just skip the italics if you are not interested. Details on how this image was created. The RAW file was first opened Lightroom and Auto Tone was used and David duChemin‘s Classic India Split Tone preset for the soft vintage colors. (Here are the settings if you want to create it: Split Toning Panel using these slider settings: Highlights Hue 50 and Saturation 60, and Shadows Hue 266 and Saturation 35.) The Adjustment Brush was used to slightly sharpen the flower. In Photoshop Topaz (see my Tidbits Blog sidebar for website link) DeNoise 5 was used set to Overall .07 and Shadows .47 since I wanted a little noise left in the flower petals. Kim Klassen‘s Brush 1793 was used to add some color grunge in the top part of the image and the layer was set to 61% opacity. 2 Lil Owl’s Workbook Bonus Texture Set-14 (see my Tidbits Blog sidebar for website link) was placed on top and set to Linear Burn blend mode and 61% layer opacity. Nik Analog Efex was used adding these tabs: Basic Adjustments, Lens Distortion, Zoom & Rotate Blur, Light Leaks, Lens Vignette, Film Type, Frames, and Levels & Curves. As you can see, this was a major evolution! At this point the image could have been done and it looked pretty nice.

After saving as a PSD file, I saved it as a high quality JPG and took the image into Corel Painter. Since Analog Efex Pro changed the tone of the image when the pretty frame was applied, I could not remove it so I had to work with the edges of the frame in Corel. Painter is basically a pretty destructive program – I am find out that not every brush will work on layers above the canvas like it does in Photoshop with the Mixer Brushes. Therefore, most of the painting is done on the canvas itself. When it gets to a point you like, do a Save As and number it. Then go back and try some more painting and do the Save As again with a new number. I did this several times until I got a look I really liked. Basically worked with a Jeremy Sutton “Jeremy’s Jittery Dabber” brush from his  Painter X Creativity book’s extra CD, and Fay Sirkis‘s “Sea World Fan Blender” brush from her Fay’s Master Brush Collection from Kelby Training several years ago (unfortunately it does not appear to be available anymore – her brushes are the best!) Since Painter has so many different brushes, and there are many available for free on the Internet including Deviant Art, it is pretty easy to find some brushes you like. By adding color and blending, the background is what resulted. Jeremy has a website that you can join and get all of his workspaces and brushes – see Paintbox TV.

The PSD file from Painter was brought back into Photoshop where a little Topaz Detail 3 was added – really added a nice edge to both the flower and texture in the background. I duplicated the layer and converted it to a Smart Object. Then I went into the Camera Raw filter just to fine-tune the colors in the HSL sliders. That was it!

Framing

This is just a simple frame that I created in Painter using a brush called Dems Oil Chunky Funky, a favorite of Jeremy’s and a free download. I saved the frame as a JPG and brought it into this image of the top of an old historic building that is the Armstrong Junior College building in Savannah, Georgia. The frame layer was highlighted and Select -> Color Range was used to select the white inside – then check invert box, click OK, and add a layer mask. There is your frame. You can adjust the opacity, change the blend mode, add Solid Color Adjustment Layer or Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer to get the effect you want. Very simple. And you can use it on many different images if you save it with your own texture collection.

I hope you found this blog useful. Using Painter with Photoshop is really not that difficult and you can get some startling results without too much effort. I hope to be able to show some more techniques using both programs in the near future……Digital Lady Syd