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Oil Paint Filter

Lesson 8 from: Adobe Photoshop: Creative Explorations, Lighting Effects & More

Ben Willmore

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Lesson Info

8. Oil Paint Filter

Lesson Info

Oil Paint Filter

I'm gonna use one filter on this image so first remember whenever I do something that's going to be a painting like thing I over saturate my image? This is a photo that I took in new mexico and I thought it would look nice with the painting, so the first thing I'd do is adjust the image over saturated second thing I'll often do when wanted to make something look more like a painting is I'll retouch out any elements that I don't think you're going to help the painting so in this case and if you can see it or not but there's some construction tape going across here saying caution like warning don't cross uh I don't know if this thing here which is a railing that you're just seeing the edge of you're not seeing this side where you could actually tell it's a railing, eyes sitting in there those elements are things where if I was actually standing there with the canvas and a brush, I don't think I'd paint him in right now so I would usually retouch those things out to do so I like to do it ...

on a separate layer, so I just create a brand new empty layer because I might decide later on that I actually wanted that detail or maybe if I'm doing it for a client, they might say what happened to my special rope? You know that retouched out, so I got a new empty layer there, and what I can end up doing here is used the spot healing brush. The only thing is, if you're gonna work on an empty layer with any retouching tools, you're going to need to go to the top of your screen and find a setting called sample all layers and turn it on. Otherwise, you're retouching tools won't be ableto work on an empty layer, so I'm going to see if this will allow me to paint out this little, uh, tape here there's a shadow for the tape right there, and this does not need to be perfect because we're going to end up with a painterly and result, and so you're not going to see every little detail, but if it's anything blatant, we're gonna want to get rid of it. We had a whole different class on retouching as part of photo shop mastery, and so if you're not overly versed in these tools, then refer to that particular course it's, mainly at the ends where it might mess up, but here is a shadow for get rid of that messed up right there, good, just give it if it messes up, give it three tries and if it doesn't work after three tries, switch to a different tool. That might make you doom or manual work, but I'm just going to get rid of any elements that I usually wouldn't paint in if I was standing there painting that's good enough if there's anything else uh one little blotch up here do you see little white blotch of that if you find that this um clouds over here would be distracting if you wouldn't paint them in because it's only on one side I might decide to get rid of those it might mess up right where I touch this we'll find out come on, I'm not too bad once it looks pan early, I don't think he'd notice any of those small issues and it's seen if there's anything else in there that I wouldn't be painting then I think we're down to pretty much what I need so I've gone and have removed my distractions the next thing I'm going to do is convert this to a smart object, so however I apply my painterly effect is not permanent it's something we could mask and all that so I'm going to take both of these layers so have the top player selected now hold shift click on the bottom layer I'm going to convert those into a smart object whenever you have more than one layer selected and you do that it'll look as if you merge those together but you still have access to both layers you still have access to both layers if you double clicking the thumbnail for this layer it would appear is a separate document where you could still work on those two layers but here we have our nice smart object we're gonna play a filter to the filter I'm going to use this time is one that's just called oil paint oil paint no I'm pretty sure it would be new and finish up cia six you don't need photo shop cc but I think you might need photo shop c s six although I'm frequently wrong so let me know if I am in here we're actually going to be applying this more than once because I find that I can't usually find one setting that makes the entire picture look good so I'm just going to zoom up on the image and let's first start off with this general area up here that does not contain all that much usable detail in it and let's just see if I can find a sitting there like for that I might not like the same setting being applied in here or over here in fact right now I cannot like the setting in this part in here look at the little rooftops in here that look kind of nice up where the cross is maybe even on the sky so actually why don't we start with this setting just to use it for out in this area okay, and then we'll try a different one for elsewhere I'll click okay? And all I'm going to dio is duplicate this layer so we can have more than one version of it. So type command jay to get a duplicate and I'll double click on the words oil paint to send me back into the settings for the filter. We have the settings we want for the the church area. So now it's choose settings for other areas. Now, it's, concentrate in this area. So in there, I think I might need this to be a little more stylized to make it interesting. Uh, maybe I want to bring up my scale. There we go to see what it looks like various settings in here not wanted to be quite as clean, poor, maybe less clean. Just experimenting. Not sure what I'm gonna like yet. How shiny. Who? Not too much of that. There we go, bring up cleanliness and I start to like it. Now, once I found that clementine that seem to be the key for this particular area, I'm just gonna experiment with the other settings. Get the scale. Okay? Tryson bristle detail doesn't seem to do much once we have the cleanliness up that high, alright let's say like setting somewhat like that for this area in here now I think it's too much for the sky because it draws attention to the sky, at least to my eye, but I like it in this area. I also think it might be too much for areas in here because I want a little more detail there, but I'm just gonna click okay? And then I'm gonna go in and apply it one more time this time looking at the green stuff that's in here, all the plants uh and maybe one other time for the sky, but I'm just going to take command j each time and then double click on the word oil paint to get back into the settings, then I'll zoom up on whatever area the image I'm thinking of in this case thinking of the flowers and let's take a look, I'm guessing I might need to bring scale down in here to get two more detail to see what happens bring cleanliness way down, you see way too much detail, clean it out just enough so it looks stylized and then experiment. I'm only concerned about the flowery areas like it with detail see if the shine helps little more shine in there might help I'm just going to say that I don't care what it looks like in here we got a different application of it for that particular area click okay and then I'm going to duke let it one last time command jay double click on oil paint and I'm just gonna look at the sky I might have one I already like in the sky I don't know how I'm gonna zoom up there and to see what I'd like in there I might want it less stylized want just more of a normal texture I don't want to draw the attention they're too much I want to clean it up quite a bit less scale so that the texture doesn't quite have much of a chance to be obvious and maybe bring my shine down there really subtle this guy just something where there's some texture in there but it's not going toe pull your attention to it. Okay, click okay now I have four different applications in the filter for various areas and now all you do is mask them all so that they only show up in the areas where they're needed and so the first thing I'm gonna do is we're working on the top layer that's the one where I like it for the sky. So why don't I grab the quick selection tool and come in here and select everything except for the sky? And for now when I say the sky, I'm thinking only at the top part of the sky, I'm not sure over by the the building that's in there, I might like the clouds with more detail, so I'm good for now assume that I want one of the other filters for that it's mainly that outer part of sky I got the whole bottom portion of the image selected now minus the sky that's at the top. I'll click on the mask for this particular layer, and I'm just going to tell photoshopped to fill the mask in black is what hides things. So I'm going to tell father shop to fill with black d select, and now if I showed just the top layer, I'll just option click on its eyeball to hide the others. Uh, one thing I've done that I don't want to do here, actually let me choose undo a few times messed up a little bit what that is. I don't want to apply, uh this to the mask for the filter. I want to apply it to the actual image itself. If I applied to the filter, all that's going to do is remove the filter defects in the lower part of the photograph. It's not going to allow me to see to reveal the other layers that are under it, so I want to stay away from that, actually, instead, I'm gonna add a mask up here. Usually when you add a mask it keeps the area that's selected so I'm going to make its only the sky selected I'll go to the select menu and choose in verse no I just have my sky and with that top layer active I'm goingto addle air mask my brain saw a mask already sitting there and just assume day let's put it there but I need a layer mass like click here and now you can see that that top layer is on ly showing up in that little area that I can turn on the layer that's one below it and it's going to fill in that empty spot for me and I can look at that part I'm going to zoom up I'm going to see where do I want that look now I think that's way too much detail up in here way too much detail in that sky it's kind of distracting on the building it might be too much but where I like it is over here where the flowers are and where the greens are okay so I'm gonna add a mask in this time what? I end up adding my mask uh I'm just gonna add the mask and then I'm gonna paint with black and wherever I paint with black it would end up hiding the slayer the problem is if I hide the slayer right now there's nothing underneath it that's turned on to fill in the gap so if I start painting you see how it just looks like a checkerboard there's nothing under there so let's turn on one of the layers that are underneath for this I'll just tryingto layer directly below it and that way when I paint away part of this uh there's something to be revealed under there so what? I paint away dc underneath there's something there in fact, I think what I want to do is fill the entire mask with black I'll just go to the edit menu and say fill this mask, make the entire layer disappear by filling with black so now I can just paint it and where I wanted if I paint with white, I'm going to bring it in so I'll get a small brush and I'm paying with white and just don't say where do I want that fine detail just in here where these flowers are and I would usually be a little bit more careful in this but not a lot come over here and see if I'm gonna like it better over and here or not I'll paint or detailed wherever I want really fine detail is we're gonna paint I find that the oil uh paint filter works great on uh things that air harry dogs, cats, horses uh and things that are, uh complex like like bushes and that kind of stuff just applying it with one setting over the whole thing could be great in that case, but when it comes to an image that has mixed content like this one, I find that usually I have to apply usually about three or four different applications of it to get what I want just so you know, to move around the image. I'm just pressing the space bar space bar will temporarily give you the moves are not to move till the hand tool, and so I could just click with the space bar held down and dragged to end up moving around my document, and I don't have to be absolutely precise because unlike with a normal image, this one, every single thing in the entire photograph is goingto have texture to it it's not like I'm gonna suddenly notice it, go to normal photo and be able to tell exactly where I painted. The other thing I might do with this brush is paint anywhere where there's just fine detail that I think would be useful showing the detail like here, there's a little bit tight, not in the door, I can paint over it if I want to be able to see a little more detail in it, I think on the other door, there are some metal. Little metal hardware here may I want you to see that a little more detail this little rivet or whatever it is because this particular layer is the one that's allowing a tremendous amount of detail to come through that's where I'm going to be painting is anywhere where I want you to be able to see that uh tremendous kind of detail if I were paint over an area that I don't like what I've done painting all I need to do is instead of paying with white I would switch over on paint with black and paying with black will remove the effect from wherever you pain okay, I can also come in here and apply it in other areas but remembering here I found a setting that really liked for the top of the church that's the bottom most layer we haven't revealed yet and so we're probably going to be painting that in but later on I can come back if I want to and add it to these areas if I find it would look good there so I'm just gonna continue the process I'll go down to the layer below this I need to turn on the bottom most layers so that if a hide part of this layer it will reveal what's under there and if I just turn off the eyeball in this layer you can see this is where we still have left to fill in and so I go in here, turn on the layer below, just so if we hide anything, we have something that's going to show up that's, what's under it, add my mask, and then what I can do is a zoom up here and take a look. If I want to see what would happen if I were to hide this by painting with black, I just trough the eyeball in the layer and say, hey, this is what's underneath it, I just revealed what's underneath it. So wherever I paint that's, what I'm going to get wherever I don't paint, this is what I'm going to get and so I look at where doe I like this look and where do I prefer what's under it? I think what's under it, I mainly prefer where the building is in the distance and also where the sky is in the distance, but I don't like it as much on the building, so I'm going to come in here and say, all right, where did I prefer the look of that other thing? I'll paint with black say, fine, let me bring it in just in those areas, there's some areas I won't be able to apply to, and that would be anyplace where on the layers above I am. Having things show up like where I painted over on the side pieces and everything that's sitting up on top so if I reveal something underneath it won't show through because it's it's just like having a sheet of paper a top of something it's goingto block your view of it and so I can come in here though and I as much of this is I would like some leeway just spend a little bit more time than I am here and you can build up this effect I find the more you spend time getting into small areas like here where the ladder is and bring it back with more detailed application the better this is going to look a hole so that it doesn't look like a generic filter applied with the same settings to the entire picture instead it looks appropriate for the various areas in here just switch on paint with black if you paint across something you didn't want so hopefully that gives you a sense for how I can build this effect up and be able to get it where I like the way the sky is because nice and simple I like the way this is who's got nice texture to it and I like the amount of detail that I'm getting in various areas because there are multiple applications and if you want to see the whole thing building up all you do is turn off these eyeballs and show that this is being used in the sky the next layer is only being used for those detailed areas are the next layer is being used in there and the final layer is filling in the rest if we ever need to make a change let's say I forgot to retouch out that safety tape that was there remember that and I went through this whole process where I ended up applying all the filters and of duplicating it ended up painting all the mass and I'm like, oh man, I didn't think about safety tape remember that yellow tape going across its okay is long as you turn something into a smart object first because if that's the case you can double click on the thumbnail for the smart object right here and it'll tell you hey when you're done just choose save it's pretty much what it means there it's going to pop open and show me what the original contents of my smart object was before I started putting all these painterly effects on it and now I can come in here and say, well I really don't like the stain that's here I don't like the cloud that's there and I could come in and just retouch those things out I'm not going to be precise about it right now because I'm just trying to show like especially there I could show you the point but you can do that and if you took our retouching class from a previous episode you would know how so ben so all four layers are actually accessing that same exact smart object yes they're all referring back to the same original contents and kill on imagine that looked better in any adjustments that I make here like if we didn't want this little hole here or something we can guess come in here and retouch it out at this point in those all of those layers that have those filters applied should re calculate toe look back to this new original so all I'm going to do is write now choose save I'm not going to choose save ass save asked me and save it on my hard drive in some location here when I choose save it means saying that back to where it came from where it came from where did this document come from when I double clicked on the layer that contained that smart object so I just to save and I close this when I do the other version of it which is right behind this shit update it'll take a minute for it to do it it has to apply that filter four times but now take a look and noticed that all choose undo do you see a retouched out that little part up there see every touched out the little cloud and I got rid of that little part down there as well but that's only because I turned worded it into a smart object, but par applying the filter and what happens is anytime you type command jaded, duplicated, smart object it just thinks of all of those duplicates of the smart object is pointing back to the same original when I double click on the thumbnail for that layer the thumbnail image that's how I went in to edit it I'm editing the original that all of those point two and so when I save and close that it ends up updating this re applying the filters in remembering where all my mask are, and so I think it makes for a really nice way to work. Then alex in the lounge says he has a hard time believing you do this all on your track pad uses a welcome or it depends, okay? It depends on what I'm doing in today. I'm not going to use it walk on because I want to let you know that a lot of this stuff can be done without it believe it or not, if I reach right here, look at this. It will be using this tomorrow when I talk about the features that are specific to this I used to use an old version of this that had a, you know, the cable version this one's wireless and I'm talking decades ago kind of thing and I use it for all my seminar so when I was done I take the court and I'd wrap it around it and I go put it in my bag and after doing about thirty seminars the cord developed a short and I had to work for three full days using that thing and I got used to it I got good at it and so it depends on what I'm doing most of time with painting though the tablet's goingto be much better and you'll see that tomorrow but I'll show you how I set up the tablet to make it really nice uh so yeah I usually prefer to work on talent sure what questions do we have? He has a question does converting to smart object effective file size at all yeah it does because it not only has to keep those individual layers that air inside the smart object but then it has to have a representation of them so it's kind of like you have the size of the original layers plus you have the size have emerged version of those layers so it can double the file size and doing so uh but it could be really worth it when you have a situation like this one where it gives you the ability going and still make changes so I can come in here and do all sorts of things I could adjust this again to get more shattered detail by editing the smart object and boom it would update everything I could do all sorts of things s o I find it to be really nice then would you say that is a tiff ear's a psd either one wouldn't matter most of time these days though I'm using tiff the main reason why I'm using tiff is uh that I think it's light rumor I think tiff has a larger file format file size limit then photoshopped file format on occasion the files are a little bit smaller and there are other features that uh better take advantage of the tiff file format for other purposes so I'm just starting to kind of convert in the past if you ask me three years ago I would have said I always use photoshopped file format for layered files, but I'm kind of deviating from that nowadays ben sees reflecting starlight from hawaii would like to know why are you duplicating the entire smart object instead of just masking each application of the filter separately on the same smart object? Well the problem is that you can only have one mask for all smart filters that are applied to that particular layer, so in order to be able to apply a different filter to each one, I would need to embed the image into a new smart object and apply the filter paint on that mask and then embed that into another smart object paint on that mask and it would do it so that now I have to double click on the layer to open it up and see the original contents of the smart object to get to the mask of one of the previous applications it would just would be a little more cumbersome. Uh but the main thing is if you just apply multiple applications of the oil paint toe one smart object, then there's just one mask on it that affects all of those and so I can't say for this particular application use it only one spot so it's just not going to let me get to what I want to do in that particular wet cool so you could have multiple filters but only a single mask on a single smart object. Yeah, pretty much. There is one mask for what they call the smart filters. Yeah, so however many filters you applied to that layer, you got one mass to effect where they show up and if I need to have another mask for another one of the filters, I need to work on a duplicate or embed a smart object in new smart off an animal ordered way of thinking exactly and of course, that applies to all smart objects, not just oil paint yes, that's right? And it doesn't matter what filter your plan great thank you so right then I have a question from mary from costa rica my mary mary ask is there a way to control the opacity of each effect to keep the settings you did but apply them in a more subtle way yeah I mean if you just go to one of these layers like let's say the layer that's in here and I don't want it a full strength I just figure out what layer that's on if I look in my layers panel I'm guessing this one because that's where I see white in the mass quite mean show up and I see there's a light at the top so here is that application if I don't want it to full strength all I'm going to do is with this could do one of two things I could if I wantto make it so every area and here's lesson just lower the opacity of the entire layer so here I'll click on the word opacity at the top of my layers panel slowly bring it down and that were revealed the original image or whatever images straight below it so I could lessen it or when I'm painting lower the opacity of my brush so make sure I'm working on the mask bring the capacity of my brush down maybe fifty percent and now it really depends on where I paint I have to areas where I could paint I could put my paint on the mask that's controlling where this layer shows up, or I could put my paint on the mass that controls how much the filter shows up. So if I do this painting on the layer mask, I'm gonna bury, revealing the layer that's underneath. Halfway. When I paint here, some at fifty percent opacity. Choose. Undo. If I click on the mask for the smart filter, I'm gonna lessen the effect of the smart filter, revealing fifty percent of the original picture, as opposed to what's underneath, and so I could lessen it. So depends on which mask you paint on. One is going to reveal the layer that's underneath. The other is going to reveal the original picture on its the one attached to the smart filter that would reveal the original picture.

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Ratings and Reviews

Kathleen
 

This is the second class on PS filters that I've taken with Ben Willmore. He is handsdown a fabulous teacher and one I highly recommend. I purchased both classes and I feel that for the price, they are worth their weight in gold. I applied his PS filter techniques to some of my surface pattern designs that were created using my original artwork and I've received great comments. So I owe a great deal of gratitude to CL and to Ben Wilmore for giving me the opportunity to grow my PS knowledge and to apply it with confidence to my artwork. Thank you!

a Creativelive Student
 

well I would recommend it sort of. I think much of the chapters show you how to use things without giving good examples or reasons such as with the brushes part. The photo on the cover is never worked on or really any of the topics didn't talk about how to achieve that look. I did learn some things as I have a lot to learn. I have been using the textures with great success. He does a nice job of explaining...I just don;t think we saw enough start to finish work.

a Creativelive Student
 

Fantastic tutor and course content! Ben Willmore truly is a master of Photoshop and has the ability to teach all aspects of Photoshop in such and easy-to-understand manner. Thanks so much for making Photoshop so much more understandable. Highly recommended.

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