How to Create an Easy Oil Paint Effect in Photoshop

Learn to make an easy oil paint effect in photoshop. Add a textured overlay to make it look like your image was done on an artist canvas.

Create an Easy Oil Paint Effect in Photoshop

In today’s video, I’ll show you a quick and easy way to give an image that oil paint effect in Photoshop. Then we’ll add a textured overlay to make your image look like it’s on an artist’s work surface. We’re going to start with this image of this marina with all these boats. The first thing we’re going to do is duplicate our background layer twice.

I’m going to rename this top layer here highlights and the layer below it. I’m going to call it oil paint. I’m going to make the top layer a smart object. And then I’m going to come up to filter other high pass. And the radius. could be about 4. This layer is going to do a couple of things. One thing it’s going to do is retain some of the original details will always had this.

I say okay. And for right now, I’m going to turn visibility of this layer off. On the oil paint layer, I’m going to make that a smart object. Then I’m going to come up to filter, stylize, oil paint. I’m going to turn on my preview. I have my preview window up here. These sliders all have to do with the way the brush effect looks.

I’m going to bring these all over to the left here. And stylization increases or decreases the intensity of the strokes. Cleanliness is the overall opacity of the effect. Sometimes I like to start off with both of these at about six. You can get creative here and adjust these and see what you like. You can see if I really crank these up.

It’s a whole different effect. So I me keep them around six right now. We can come back to this later if you want to change it. I’ll leave these two sliders in the middle. Lighting has to do with the light direction of the brush. I like to have a turned on. And up here in the image, you can see how shine a effects some of the texture you see. We’re going to keeps shine

pretty low. About 0.9. And we’re not going to work too much about the angle right now. Because our oil paint layer is a smart object, this filter we’re adding is now going to be a smart filter. I’m going to say, okay. Over here on the right, if I click this down arrow, here’s my smart filter with the oil paint effect.

Just double click on that and I can come back and change any of these sliders and get the effect that I want to see. So if you look at oil painting, there’s many different kinds. There’s a smoother effect. There are oil paintings where you see heavy brushstrokes, be creative and make your image look how you want it to look.

We say, okay. Now back to this layer up here. This is highlights. I’m going to make that visible, I can change the blending mode to overlay. So this is the before and this is the after. What this layer does is it preserves some of the detail and it makes the mid tones to be invisible and bring out highlights and shadows. And you can change the opacity of that highlight layer.

If bring that all the way down, bring it up again, something around 50. When I click on my oil paint layer in it. For some reason you have any artifacts in your image and you want to take care of that, plus make a little enhancement come up to filter, camera raw, filter. Click over here in the detail, add some noise reduction.

Just kicked that up a little bit. Over in basic you can add a little clarity, say maybe four or five and go to effects and add a little bit of grain and maybe ten. This just adds to the image, say, okay. So you’ve got two smart filters to go back in to make adjustments. So far, here is the before and here is the after.

So if I want a stronger effect, I can double click on my oil paint and look at certain areas. Zoom in on them and you can change a little bit more, shine a little bit more stylization and cleanliness. Just play with these sliders until you get the effect that you want and say, okay, do me a favor, hit that like.

But it really helps the channel. I appreciate it. Now I want to add a texture to overlay kind of like an artistic canvas. Look, I have this texture right here. I’ll use my move tool, hold down shift and drag it up to my image, let go. I’m going to change my blending mode and try different ones. Just going to go down the line here overlay, soft light, hard light. I kind of like the way the colors pop on overlay.

I’m going to select overlay. Then I can also change my opacity. I take that all the way down and bring it up. Something like 70. Just a number I chose. And now it’s changed the look of this whole image. And zoom in here again and give you another look. Here’s the before and here’s to after.

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Read the previous blog post here ➡️ SUPERB Technique for Blurry Bokeh Background