Spindrift Photo

Another Oil Paint Filter Example

Here’s another example of the Oil Paint filter in Photoshop CS6 beta.  In this case, the leaves around the spring exhibit the organic shapes that work so well with this filter when you can see the full detail it provides.

Did I Paint That?

Adobe released a public beta of Photoshop CS6 a few weeks ago and I’ve been playing around with some of the new features.  One of my favorite new features is the Oil Paint filter which takes photos and applies a filter that makes it look, well, like an oil painting.  There are some places that this effect works amazingly well and others where it’s not that interesting.  

The Oil Paint filter seems to excel in images with lots of organic lines and shapes like leaves and branches while big open sky looks more like an effect than a painting.  The image above is of a small chapel in Gascony, France.  With the lens distortion, it is a little spooky to begin with but when I added the Oil Paint filter, the business of the tree and the leaves on the ground suddenly became swirly shapes and shadows which I found quite appealing.

If you look at an image that has been run through this filter from a distance, it is actually tough to see much of a difference.  Instead, this filter begs to be printed in large form where you can really get up and see the painterly detail that it creates. You won’t see the depth from the brush strokes that true oil painting have, but what I see is something that can provide the feel of an oil painting for those of us without that skill :-)

The filter itself is simple to use with only a few settings to adjust the stylization and cleanliness of the strokes and the angular direction and shine of the lighting (which tries to emulate the depth of the paint strokes). Kudos to the Photoshop team for adding this great new filter and keeping it so simple.