Digital Painting - Take One

I've seen this effect in other areas and always wanted to give it a shot. I've seen the super impressionist oil painting effects which look more like a painting than a photograph. But I wanted to go the other way - keep the "photo" intact while adding elements of oil paint.

These two girls are daughters of some friends. We actually shot this on a whim at sunset in the grass field next to my house.

Expect to see more of this in the future. I've got some other visuals in mind, so we'll see where the effect goes.



And some closer crops to see the brush detail...








And the original...



It really is amazing you can pull so much out of an image. This was my favorite composition and expression between 50+ shots. Unfortunatley to get the back lit sun we had a huge flare to deal with. No time to setup fill lights - we got what we got.

Most of this image is actually touched with a brush - very few photoshop effects here. This is mostly accomplished with the photoshop smudge tool. I never realized the power locked up in this tool until I began to experiment a bit. Using the right brushes, it really is quite powerful.