Photoshop Tutorial: Impressionist Painting from Photo

To create an impressionistic effect in a photo, we have to emphasize texture and color at expense of detail. Our aim is to create a photo-art painting in the style of Claude Monet. The image has a file size of 3.9 megapixels.

Save a copy of the original photo in the clipboard (Select All and Copy).

Make a duplicate layer by clicking Command-J (or drag the background to the New Layer Icon)

Set the foreground color in the toolbar to a light gray tone (approximately 20% black) and the background color to white.

Click on Filter>Sketch>Chalk and Charcoal

Slide the Charcoal Area ruler to 6
Slide the Chalk Area ruler to 20
Slide the Stroke Pressure ruler to 1

Click on Filter>Brush Strokes>Spatter

Set Spray Radius to 10 and Smoothness to 5. Click OK

Change the Current Layer to Luminosity in the Layers Palette and flatten the image

Create a new layer with the original image and set the layer mode to Multiply

Click on Image>Adjustments>Brightness / Contrast. Move the Brightness slider to 100% and the Contrast slider to 66%

Click on Filter>Artistic>Underpainting

Keep the Brush Size at 0
Set the Texture Coverage to 20
Keep the Texture as Canvas and slide the Scaling to 100% and Relief to 4
In Light Direction choose Bottom Left

Click OK

Click on Edit>Fade Underpainting and set the Fade Mode to Soft Light

Flatten the Image and adjust the contrast

Click on Image>Adjustments>Selective Color and fine tune the colors and values

Red Slider: C 0% / M 50% / Y 0% / K 50%
Yellow Slider: C -50% / M 50% / Y -36% / K 50%
Green Slider: C 100% / M 50% / Y -36% / K 0%
Cyan Slider: C 100% / M 100% / Y 0% / K 50%
Blue Slider: C 100% / M 50% / Y 0% / K 0%
Magenta Slider: C 50% / M 0% / Y 0% / K 0%
White Slider: C -50% / M -12% / Y 0% / K 100%
Neutral Slider: C 50% / M 0% / Y 0% / K 0%
Black Slider: C -36% / M 24% / Y 0% / K -18%

Click to enlarge