Art Photography – How to Create an Oil Painting from a Photo with Corel Painter

Today we’re talking Art Photography as Bob Nolin from Digital Image Magazine shares some tips on creating an oil painting effect from a photo.

Imagine you had a magic paint brush, and when you painted with it on a blank canvas, it changed colors for you all by itself. You wouldn’t have to try to mix colors, or worry about drawing outside the lines. The magic brush would do all the hard work for you. It would allow you to become the artist you had always dreamed of being.

Well, there really is such a magic brush, and it’s called Corel Painter.

Today we’re going to create an oil painting, step by step, with Painter. Estimated time: one hour. A Wacom or other digital tablet is highly recommended.

How to Create an Oil Painting from a Photo with Corel Painter

The magic brush works by cloning (copying) color from a source photo to a target canvas (document). All you have to do to enable cloning is to open an image file (a JPG or a Photoshop file will work), and then go File > Clone. This creates an exact copy of the original file, and sets up the magic link between source and target. You could begin painting on this copy right away, which would be similar to the way traditional photo painters work with oils on a canvas-mounted photograph. But we’re going to start with a blank canvas, and pull color onto it from the original photo.

(more…)