Art workflow tutorial #1: How I soften the Impasto filter...

Theory: Slapping a photo into Snap Art is a good place to start. However, through trial and error, the use of layers/lighting, and Exposure, some interesting results can be achieved.

Objective: To create a floral piece that looks as though it were created on distressed canvas, is very old, and which simulates the gamut of wet on wet based oil painting when printed onto fine art paper, canvas, or watercolor paper.

Begin: I should start by saying that I have always been jealous of Katrin Eisman and her inherent ability to seamlessly montage images and provide overlays that add depth and meaning to her pieces. There are numerous others on the web who have mastered these compositing techniques and their experience is vast. However, with Snap Art and Exposure, what used to take hours of compositing and layering for these masters can be imitated in a few simple steps. The stock PS filters for things like watercolor and paint daubs are all well and good for adding some sense of invisible digital wizardry to plain jane photos, but Snap Art really does take it one step further as you will see in this simple demonstration. Now, we luddites can get in on some of the action these PS wizards have been using against us, and truth be told, its not that hard.

A floral with an isolated subject provides a good exposition of this technique.

Fig. 1: Here is an unretouched digital image. In this case, a ghost orchid, which happens to lend itself nicely to our needs... to create a fine art masterpiece in as few steps as possible.


Fig. 2: Here is the same image after being applied the standard Impasto, with settings below, everything else set to stock.



Fig 3: The Impasto settings, you can obviously experiment with these to your liking, but I kinda liked the effect these stock numbers produced. All the other tabs are default.


Fig 4: Since my preference is for softer, more nebulous images, I dragged the Impasto layer onto a new layer above my original photos, set the opacity to 60%, and then set the layer mode to "Difference" in order to soften and darken things a little more.


Fig. 5: The layer stack looks like this.


Fig. 6: And the history stack looks like this (ignore the snapshot).

Now, for many, the image might be far enough along to be a nice fine art piece. However I wanted to darken, add noise, and increase the red channel slightly to more imitate the gamut and feel of a canvas. This meant I handed off to Exposure and added a GAF-500 Warm pass.

Fig. 7: Here is the final piece after two passes through GAF-500 and then flattened. I find that Exposure + Snap Art to be a very powerful combination.

I hope this tutorial helps some of you generate ideas for your photographic compositions. As a photographer, I basically use Snap Art to mellow out some of my really crisp photos so that the composition looks warm, faded, on textured paper, and hand colored/painted. This plug-in has helped me achieve this with really nice results, and I wanted to reinforce that with Snap Art + Exposure together, there are almost limitless expressions available for a single piece.

Tags: snap art, tutorial

Art Workflow tutorial #2: To create the subtle tonality of a chemically processed fine art print, with hints of a watercolor....

Theory: The watercolor masters (especially the Chinese ones) all had something in common. They were able to merge the seemingly incongruous elements of the medium, transposing the tonality and formlessness of the diluted paint, while retaining exquisite detail in their subjects.

Objective: Creating the perfect montage between a sharp landscape photo and a watercolor painting, tricking the eye into believing the work is created via some fine art printing process. (Curly voice): Knyuck, knyuck, knyuck.

Begin: First, lets take a seemingly banal photo and give it some real punch.

Fig 1: Here is a landscape that will serve as our subject. I am a big landscape fan, so I decided that perhaps a simple sunset scene on the water would be a nice way to really show the power of Snap Art. I chose a scene from Juneau Alaska, where I was lucky enough to go to this summer. As can be seen, this photo lends itself nicely to the watercolor filter... it has areas of clouds and less detail, and areas of mountains and islands that have more.



Fig. 2: Using the "Abstract, Pastel Colors Brush" in the Watercolor tab, under the settings menu, I adjusted the "Basic" tab to fit the settings I desired for my piece. Since I wanted the whole piece covered, I thought it might be nice to experiment, and bump the brush size all the way to 100, and boost the paint coverage all the way to 99. Since my photo already has good detail, I decided to leave the fine edge detail at 0 this time so as not to introduce artifacts that affect sharpness, but again, YMMV with how you approach your pieces.... the same goes to be said for wet brush (default) over dry brush. In this instance, the other tabs are all completely untouched. Finally, remember to click the "Create Output in New Layer" so that you can fine tune your piece and retail full control over its opacity.



Fig. 3: Here is the piece as it comes to us from art using the above settings. Again, you can play with how much coverage you like, but since I wanted coverage for my whole piece, I went with 99. This layer sits on top of the "Background" photo for now, as I go in to create a canvas effect.


Fig. 4: Usually, fine art watercolor pieces benefit from a texture layer that simulates the depth of traditional artistic media, particularly canvas or rice paper like textures. Here is a pattern I use frequently from the How to Wow photoshop book, but almost any "canvas like" texture will do. Using a pattern fill layer, I set the scale size to %323 (because of the size of this particular 6676*2425px piece) and added it on top of the watercolor layer and the photo layer. Now, its time to play with opacity and the lighting settings.


Fig. 5: At this point, your layer stack should look like this. For the the watercolor canvas pattern, I set the opacity to 53% and the lighting to darken, just enough to give it visible texture.



Fig. 6: For the Snap Art Watercolor layer, the opacity is set to 85% and the lighting to "Soft Light". This adds the subtlety we need to create the all the detail of the original photo, but realistically imitate that hand embellished piece.

Now, with our layer adjustments, we have a fine art piece with the divine abnormalities of both a hand embellished chemical process, and a masterful landscape watercolor. Viola! Mission accomplished.

Fig. 7: Before

Fig. 8: After

Please don't redistribute these images or tutorials without permission, thanks.

Tags: tutorial, snap art

I promised you all a tutorial on fine art "pen and ink" flowers a couple of weeks ago, so here it is. This is a technique that uses two Photoshop plug-ins from Alien Skin software. The first is 'Snap Art', the second is 'Exposure'. The image is from a 10 megapixel Nikon D80 with a 105mm VR.

Objective: A cross between a color pen and ink sketch and a photo. The work should look like it was created by hand on fine art canvas or textured paper while at the same time retain the best details of the original high resolution macro photo.

Here is a simple picture of a flower:

This technique works very well on subjects like florals, where an artistic approach helps accentuate the beauty of the flower. You will notice I prefer an isolated subject when using this process, I really like it when my flowers stand out from the background, but not so much so that my final piece looks like too much like a still life. I tend to think of these pieces as organic still life, the flower is isolated, but it appears with a mottled background, perhaps a more natural setting than either a solid white or black background. In this particular example, I chose a lighter pink flower that really arrests your eyes when you put in on a dark background. Its great when a background is nicely blurred like this example, as the pen and ink technique will really help the subject stand in front of the out of focus elements creating a '3D effect'.

Ok, now that we have a nice subject and realize what we want to accomplish, lets get out hands dirty.

First we are going to duplicate the layer. Layer>Duplicate This way we don't degrade the details of the original photo, and we can play with the opacity of the Snap Art filter to adjust the desired transparency of the effect. Trying to balance the amount of detail vs the amount of the filter may take some experimentation. First, run the filter. I use Settings>Tone Adjustment, contrast high.

Here are the settings for the 'Basic' tab:

Snap Art>Pen and Ink>Tone Adjustment, contrast high>Basic

These settings are a result and trial and error and reflect my personal preference, don't be afraid to experiment as you can use almost any settings in the 'Pen and ink' filter and get good results.

Here is what the Snap Art layer looks like:

Pretty cool on its own, we are going to 'tone down' this layer so that we can get back the colors and some of the detail of the original photo

After the filter is applied, select the opacity percentage and lock it in. In this example, I used a somewhat subtle 29% with the layer style set to "overlay".

Here is what my layer stack and lighting look like:

Layers Palette

"Overlay" allows the nice dark lines of the pen and ink filter to accentuate the edges of our floral, while at the same time helping darken the background and highlight the yellow portion of the flower.

Here is the result:

After toning down the 'pen and ink' layer

At this point you can flatten the image, Layer>Flatten Image, for a pass though Alien Skin's 'Exposure'.

I want this piece to be somewhat grainy and warm, so I am going to use a grainy film. In 'Exposure': Settings>GAF 500-warm.

Now we have this:

Mmmm... nice and warm, a more painterly palette

I was happy with these results, but I still wanted to 'burn' in some areas, particularly the top left had corner, which was still a little too bright for my tastes.

Here is what we have after some 'burning':

Better isolation from a darker background

Our piece is almost finished, but its appearance is still too 'clean' for me. This means a texture layer is in order, something that will make the picture look like is was created on watercolor paper or canvas... I usually try to incorporate both textures, which gives me good results on textured papers printed from my Epson K3 inkset printer.

Inserting a pattern layer, I get this:

Taken straight from the 'How To Wow' Photoshop book, this watercolor texture is indispensable when creating subtle texture on fine art pieces, you can pick up the book from Amazon, or try a similar texture of your own

After a conversion to softlight, here is the result:

Lighting>Soft Light helps to blend the pattern seamlessly into the piece

Our layer palette looks like this:

Notice the change to 'Soft Light', but you can also experiment with 'Overlay' or 'Darken'

Now we flatten the image and add one more texture:

Here is the final piece of the puzzle, watercolor paper overlay, again we integrate it by setting the lighting to 'Soft Light'

This last texture is subtle when the lighting is changed so you probably won't see it on these small web versions, but in the print, the weave of the watercolor texture adds additional organic 'feel' to the image.

After just a little dodging and burning, here is our final piece:

Not for everyone, but I like it :)

Tags: tutorial, snap art