Lesson Info
7. How to Get a Painterly Effect
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Lesson Info
How to Get a Painterly Effect
We are ready to checkout some painting and some fun things that we can do with painting in Elements. So we'll leave this open and just pop over to the editor. And I'm gonna grab this picture right here, this flower. So I'll click to select it and of course, we'll head back over to the editor. Now there's a lot of different ways that we can work with this. There, if we go into the quick edits, there is a effect down here. So we click the Quick Edit mode. And down here, when we click Effects, you can see that there's things like Pencil Sketch. That's kind of a more like artsy fine arty one. So there's a Pencil Sketch option. You would click to apply. Under Guided edit, there's also in the Fun Edits category, we scroll down, there's this option to add what's called a Painterly Effect. So you can kind of see the before and after right there. What we're gonna do though is stick in Expert mode. And I'm gonna show you Filters. So to apply some filters, we're gonna come up to the Filter menu a...
nd we have a few different things. We have something called the Filter Gallery. And then we have categories of filters. So we're gonna click Filter Gallery, and this is gonna load our image here. And then we see different categories. And I always like to teach this. It's kind of like a buffet, okay. So every time when you're out to eat, if you eat at a buffet, you know that you get a new plate for every trip to the buffet. So we're gonna add a couple trips to our buffet here and show you how you can stack these filters on top of each other. So our first trip to the buffet, we're gonna go into the artistic option. And we'll add what's called Paint Daubs. so I'll click Paint Daubs. And then you can see it render down here. This is the progress for the rendering and it doesn't look yet like a whole lot changed. So let's do something like increase the brush size and that's gonna re-render so you have to be patient. Because it's doing some complex stuff. And it might take a moment. There we can see it sort of working its way across the image, creating sort of a smeary dreamy like thing. So the larger you set the brush size, the more dream like and painterly it will look. We can also change what type of brush type we are using. A simple brush or a light or rough. So I'll just stick with simple. Down here, this is sort of where we have our plates for our trips to the buffet line. So we've made one trip and we've got Paint Daubs. If I don't do anything, I just come over here and click Palette Knife, I'll get the palette knife effect and it will replace the paint daubs effect. So if I want to add on top of the Paint Daubs, then I need to come down here and get a new plate. And we do that by getting a new effect layer. So click to add your new plate. And by default, it puts a repeat of what you just did. So now we've got two instances of paint daubs stacked on top of each other. Maybe we like that, maybe we wanna double up. But we could also say, "Alright, enough with the Paint Daubs. Let's try something with brush strokes like maybe Angled Strokes." So I'm gonna click on that and it's gonna render. We can see it kinda working its way across. And we can change the settings right here. And then what we're getting is angled strokes on top of paint daubs. So you can go through and take as many buffet trips as you want. And add a different plate each time. And create all kinds of really fun things. I'm gonna actually click Cancel. And go back to our regular image where I'm going to duplicate this layer so that we're working on a copy of it. So I can do that by just taking this layer that says background and dragging it up to the new layer button in this top left corner of the layer panel so I made a copy. Then I'm gonna grab my paintbrush which is right over here. Or you can press B for brush. And if I come down here, I see that I've got different brushes to choose from. And then one of them has this fun swirly line with it. So we've already worked with the brush a little bit. Let's switch to this. This is called the Impressionist Brush. And it turns out that we can do some pretty cool things. And if we just come over here and click Advanced, we can even tell it what kind of style of impressionistic brushes do we want. And my favorite to demonstrate is the Loose Curl so I'm gonna click on that and then we can close this. And let's see, we'll make the brush a little bigger. And we'll just see how it goes. I'm gonna brush right here. Let me zoom in so you can see too. So I'll hold down, command or control space bar, and just drag a big box here. Or you can press command or control plus. I'm just gonna paint right on top of the existing paint. And you'll see, it's pulling the color from what's already there. And it's making this wild swirling brush. And I just think that's so much fun. There's other options in here as well. Of course we can try, this was a loose curl. If we want, let's undo that so I'll hold down. Command or control and I'll just press z a few times til we get all that. Let's see about a Tight Curl. I like the curls for some reason. And we can also change the size of our brush if we want it smaller. What's cool is, we don't have to even pick colors or anything. It's just gonna take the existing paint that's on the canvas in the form of the photo, the pixels from the photo and just kind of play with it. So some other choices are all of these brushes. I mean we can come in here and use this impressionistic brush style but maybe we want something with a little more texture. Or something that looks like more inky. Maybe we delete this and duplicate this background one more time or not delete, excuse me, hide. So you can hide a layer anytime by just clicking the little eyeball right here. Maybe when we work on this one, this layer, the new copied one and paint on it and we get a different effect. Ooh I like that a lot. It looks sort of pointillistic, sort of mosaicy. It's taking a minute to render. It's doing a lot of calculations. But so we can create a really neat effect without having to even worry about paints. And I think that the effect that you get when you do it this way is far just more interesting and you have far more control than if you just applied one of those quick edits or something. But you don't need, you know, a lifetime of techniques studied to be able to play with it. And we'll finish the stem. And if we want to, we'll add one more blank layer. So I'm gonna click to add a blank layer right up here and I'll click to drag it behind ... No on top, we'll leave it on top. I wanted to create a little bit of a background here so let's switch to our regular brush and let's grab that same or something similar to what we were just using for our brush tip shape. So I think it was this. So I'll double-click to select this. Now I'm not working the impressionist brush anymore, just regular brush so it's not gonna make twirly funny strokes. But it will have some texture and it will have an interesting look. And I'm gonna choose a different color by choosing Window, Color Swatches, and I'll just select like a nice purple. So I'll just click once to select it. And then I can close that. I'm gonna zoom out so I can see the whole thing at once. I can make my brush a little bigger if I want by clicking down here. So I'm just kinda doing a little bit of a scribbling to fill in this area. And you'll notice what's really neat about it is if I pick up my brush and then put it again like go over the same area twice, I get a layered effect where what you might get if you were working with markers. So I'm just gonna kind of scribble that in. And we have a fun painterly effect with our image. So that is the look, our little intro to how Photoshop Elements works. Remember that it's really like two programs in one. So you're getting the organizer and the editor all in one umbrella. And they work together and help you find your images fast and then make them look their best. So thank you so much for watching and I will see you next time.
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