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Painting with Hard Light

By Rick Wetzel

You might have noticed by now that I really like "painterly effects". I really enjoy the mood that subtle texture brings to a photograph. Once again, I've experimented with blending modes to achieve a great effect. Obviously, you'll need a great texture to work with. I chose one from my Watercolor Background CD.

Step 1

For my primary subject, I chose this studio portrait. I didn't want anything in the background so you could see the total effect.

STEP 2

Copy and paste a background of your choice on to it's own layer. I chose WCT-12.jpg from the Watercolor Background CD.

STEP 3

Choose "Hard Light" from the blending modes menu.

STEP 4

Select your eraser tool, and choose "Rolled Rag - Cotton" brush and selectively remove some of the watercolor background from layer 1.

FYI - if you hover your cursor over the brushes, you'll see their descriptive names.

STEP 5

Go back to your original image which should be your background image. Copy it, and move it above Layer 1. Choose "Saturation" from the blending modes menu and dial down the opacity to 80%.

STEP 6

Create a combined duplicate of the first three layers by first selecting all the layers.

Hold down the command,option, shift keys and press the letter E.
(PC control. option, shift and the letter E)

Change the blending mode to "Multiply".

Here is a close up of this tutorial -
Painting with Hard Light.

Take a close look and notice the really nice subtle texture - one that you can't get with a repeated pattern.

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