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Painter For Photographers

Add fine-art effects to your photos with these software techniques

This Article Features Photo Zoom

CHOOSING BRUSHES
Deciding which brush to use for a particular photograph (with well over 600 different brushes to choose from) can be a problem for which there's no easy answer. My solution is to make samples from each brush category—there are almost 250 samples in my book, Painter 12 for Photographers, and you can look through these to find a suitable brush.

As a general guideline, chalks, charcoal and pastels are great for when you want paper textures to show through. Oils, pastels and gouache are terrific for pictures that look very painterly. Try blenders for making very smooth, soft images and sponges for highly textured images.

The naming of the individual brushes also gives a good guide. Brushes with bristle in their names will show the bristle clearly, and greasy and smeary do what their names imply, while flat, round, square or calligraphic describe their shapes.

ADDING PAPER TEXTURE TO A FINISHED IMAGE
Often, a finished painting, particularly one made using an oil brush, will look really good when printed on a canvas, but this can be expensive. An alternative way to achieve that look is to apply a paper texture to the image. Open the Paper Panels (Window > Paper Panels > Papers), click the small thumbnail, and select the Artists Canvas from the list.


Using the final picture from the example above, go to Effects > Surface Texture > Apply Surface Texture, which allows you to choose a variety of textures. Select Paper in the top box, and you'll see the texture has been applied to your picture in the preview. Before you press OK, try a few other papers; you can change the paper while the dialog box is still open. Return to the Artists Canvas, and press OK to add the texture. You'll need to view the picture at a larger size, preferably 100%, to see the texture properly. This is a great way to add a texture to your finished picture.

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