Tutorial Details
- Program: Photoshop CS5 Extended
- Difficulty: Beginner
- Estimated Completion Time: 20 - 30 Minutes
Download Source Files
Final Product What You'll Be Creating
Before Photoshop CS5, transforming a photo into a realistic-looking painting was quite tricky. Now that CS5 has been released we now have some new tools to help achieve this effect a bit more realistically. In today’s tutorial we will demonstrate how to use Photoshop CS5’s new Mixer Brush tool to transform a photo into a masterpiece in minutes.
Step 1
Let’s get started by first opening a photo. You can download the photo we used here. Otherwise, just open any photo you would like to convert to a painting.
Step 2
Duplicate the background layer by dragging it to the "Create New Layer" icon in the layer palette or by Pressing Cmd (Ctrl) + J.
Step 3
Now, click and hold the Brush icon in the toolbar then select the Mixer Brush Tool and release.
Step 4
While selecting the Mixer Brush, right click on your image to display this menu. You can also go to Window > Brushes.
Step 5
Choose the brush as shown below.
Step 6
Click on the icon in the top left of the brush parameters toolbar or press F5 to open the Brush dialog box.
Step 7
After the dialog has opened, enter the following parameters.
Step 8
If you are using a tablet, check the "Airbrush" Option as I’ve done here.
Step 9
Choose a fairly large sized brush, I’ve chosen 177 px but you can choose a larger or smaller one if you like. Let’s focus on the tree for now. Start moving your brush in circular movements on the right side of the tree. You can see how this works in this animation. Once you’ve finished, you should have something that looks like the image below.
Step 10
Use the same technique on the left side of the tree. Feel free to adjust the size of the brush as needed to paint in some details.
Step 11
Now let’s start working on the trunk of the tree. This time, we will use another technique, which is to start from a point and drag the brush along the trunk. Be careful to pick a brush that is the same size as the trunk and then vary it to work with the details. For this step, I used two brushes as shown below.
Step 12
Your image should now look similar to below.
Step 13
Now let’s work on the fence. For this I used the same brush as in Step 11 using the same technique.
Step 14
Your image should now look similar to below.
Step 15
Now let’s work on some additional areas. Keep making circular movements with your brush until your image looks similar to below.
Step 16
We can now start on the grass. To do this, we need to change the stiffness of the brush to 98% to get a more diffused effect. Perform some more circular movements on the grass varying the brush size to give it more detail.
Step 17
Your image should now look similar to below.
Step 18
Now select the Sharpen tool and select a brush size of 400 px. Apply it to the image as shown.
Step 19
Now go to edit, then fade the Sharpen effect, to 45% as shown.
Step 20
Your image should now look similar to below.
Step 21
Now let’s apply an Artistic filter, go to filter > Artistic > Dry Brush, and enter the settings 0, 10, 3. The, go to Edit > Fade Dry Brush and enter 35%.
Step 22
Apply a surface blur, go to filter > Blur > Surface Blur, and enter the settings 3, 4. Then go to Edit > Fade Surface Blur and enter 15%.
Final Image
Take a look at the final image.
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Very nice technique used!
Nice Lesson
Double Rainbow!
Thanks
I usually do not like a photo that is made to look like a painting because most of them look cheesy, but this one was well done. I really need to upgrade to CS5, those brushes would come in handy! Nice tut!
This effect looks definitely interesting and will give it a try when home. Thanks!
Wow, Amazing! I’ll surely do that! I always had a willingness to learn oil painting, and this technique results in a good-looking ;), thanks!
Not really my style but the outcome definitely looks nice.
So glad psdtuts put up a tut of this..saw the lynda tutorial, and was hoping someone would elaborate a little more. Beautiful result, amazing how easy it is! Thanks!
Nice tut, looks like a photo of a real painting
Great tutorial! The final outcome in my view is pretty good and reminds me of an oil painting.
Beautiful Painting and you can do it with smudge tool
thanks..
Another great tutorial using new CS5′s tool, the final result is very realistic
I need CS5! Adobe has the best annual upgrades to their software.
Always worth upgrading.
This is a lazy way of “painting” things, but cool nonetheless.
There is a lot a way to do that effect
i think this is the best i never seen ^^
Good trick !
very charming
wow, great effect! it looks like a real impressionist painting (almost ;))
Awesome tut thanks! Photo painting with CS5 is a blast and now more easier then ever before. John Derry has a nice video series at Lynda.com and Kirk Nelson is doing a class and webinar at digitalartacademy.com. Should be very cool. tim
Great feature! I’m into it now and maybe play around with my photos later. Thankss…
Really awesome. I am still very mixed about how CS5 makes things that used to be tricky/hard/complex super easy, mostly just because of how that’ll significantly lower the barrier to entrance for the field of graphic design (maybe not even in a good way), but for people like me who are self-taught and have always done things the hard ‘n tedious way, stuff like this is a huge productivity booster.
I’ve really been looking for a proper tutorial on this new tool. It has a wonderful outcome.
very nice tutorial. good job….
Thank you for all your comments i really enjoyed reading them ! :D
In fact CS5 has new features that make things lot easier, but looks Amazing, i have another trick like this, for now it is a secret i’am waiting for a confirmation from Sean ;)
Thank you for all !!
Cheers
Wassim Ouartsi
Nice technique used here but I think it’s time consuming and I prefer using a filter that gets me close to this stage with minor tweaks to get the result in less time. Still a good way of doing this for certain images. Well done!
Yeah, you can do it the easy way as you said, but if you want improved quality and a big sens of realism, the mixer brush tool is better i think !
Very very great ….. nice technique n smooth
This is really no better than carefully using smudge…
this is very nice thank you i love it!
Hi, I can’t see any foto’s/pictures in the tutorials since a week. How is this possible?
Awesome tutorial. The technique used is indeed wonderful.
i like you friends and this pics toooooooooooo
but steps ar longggggggggggggggggggggg
wow….wonderful…
I didn’t find the tutorial very useful for learning about the mixer brush.
It could be improved by actually explaining some mixer brush options (e.g dry/wet, Clean Brush, Load Brush, Sample All Layers). Those following the tutorial will get inconsistent results depending on which of these options they have set.
Also, if steps for simple things such as new layer are included, then perhaps a step explaining how the mixer colour was selected would be warranted, too.
This is beautiful =)
It would be helpful to have listed what the brush settings are instead of just saying use the following as I can’t tell what most of the brush settings are.
Thanks for the tutorial, enjoyed it lots, tried, it came out nicely, the steps were easy to understand…
Hey Mate,
Nice technique ! Nice quick and efficient…
The only con I se is that it works mainly in landscape pictures. Not on portraits..:(.
Thanks anyway for a great tutorial.
Pretty bad tutorial.
Step 18, sharpen tool, apply it to the photo. How?
He misses too many steps.
Only works on this type of landscape photo.
Not very useful.
This is very nice
Thank you