This is yet ANOTHER tutorial for producing an imitation painting froma digital photograph. Now you may be thinking "There are half a dozen filtersthat can make a photo look like a painting.", starting with  the BrushStrokes filter in PSP 7. Well, there are dozens of different techniquesand media for creating a painting in the real world - water colors, acrylic,oils - so why not different tutorials for different effects? Besides, Ireally like how this effect turns out, and since this is my website I canpretty much post anything I like *G*.

Start with a photograph with some interesting lines and shapes. A pictureof a sunset is just too simple for this effect to give a good result. Imageswith people, architecture, animals, or vehicles work nicely. Make surethat your image starts out with a full range of color (usually 16 millionor so.) If you start with a GIF (which has only 256 colors), be sure toincrease your color depth to 16 million (Colors > Increase Color Depth> 16 Million Colors.)

Now you're going to lose some of the detail in the process, so if thecomposition of the original photo depends on small details, I suggest thatyou choose another image. This is a photo of a train that I got from ArtToday. It's reduced quite a bit from the original. I actually likehow this effect operates on large images best. To show you how well thetechnique works on larger images I put a link to the full size train atthe end of this tutorial.

Start with an image that has some nice color and composition...somethingthat would make a good painting, with nice recognizable objects.

First, go to Effects > Noise > Salt and Pepper Filter. Setthe Speck Size to 9, the Sensitivity to Specks to 9, check the box marked"Include all lower speck sizes", and make sure that the "Aggressive action"box is UNchecked.

Now apply an Edge Enhancement (Effects > Edge > Enhance). Thisremoves some of the blur from the Salt and Pepper filter.

The image is still a bit too blurry for a painted image, souse the Sharpen More filter to improve it (Effects > Sharpen > SharpenMore)

To finish the effect, brighten the colors a bit (Colors > Adjust> Hue/Saturation/Lightness) set the saturation to about 17, and the Hueand Lightness settings to 0. Make sure that the Colorize box is Unchecked,and that the edit dropdown menu is set to Master.

That's all there is to it. If you'd like to see how the effectcame out on the full size image, click here.The image will pop up in a new window.