PHOTOSHOP CLONE PAINTING
This is the original image I captured along a small Texas farm road in the spring of this year, 2019, while out on one of my annual wildflower photo shoots. I generally spend 2 months of spring in the Texas hill country capturing the wildflowers such as blue bonnets, indian paint brush, indian blankets and other flowers common to the areas around San Antonio Texas where I live.
The painting technique used is "CLONE PAINTING" and this is hand painted entirely in Photoshop. The style was learned from an artist named Jack Davis and he has a training class on Creative Live where you can also learn this technique with a couple other Photoshop painting techniques. This process involves using a little known "special layer" in Photoshop that combines a copy of your photo at 1% opacity with a blank layer at 100% opacity and then these two layers are merged together. This "special layer" can then be painted on with the Photoshop mixer brush WITHOUT having to sample all layers. You can make several copies of this created special layer and make one your underpaint, one your intermediate paint and one your detailed paint. You build up the details of the painting on layers, revealing more detail by using different types of brushes, each with different bristles and smaller tighter strokes. It allows you to paint just like you would if you were painting with real paint. This first layer is my underpaint
This second layer, I changed brushes to a smaller, dryer brush and painted in more details. I switched to the second blank "special layer" that I created at the beginning of the project.
Photoshop actually provides a cloning action that will build several of these layers for you. For your first attempt at this technique, you might want to just run the default Clone Painting photoshop action and examine the layers it provides. I personally don't use that action as it builds layers I don't want or need. I don't use the action I bought from Jack Davis either, as his technique provide additional layers and steps that I don't use. So like any artist, I modified and customized the style to make it my own, and I have built my own actions to speed up my personal workflow. If you are familiar with Photoshop actions and you like the process, you probably will want to build an action for yourself.
This intermediate layer together with the underpainting looks like this:
This is the third detail mixer brush layer, it only had the finest highlights and details added to bring out some of the sharpness in some of the branches and along the rocks in the riverbank. Below are the detailed strokes and then the combined underpaint, intermediate and this detail layer together
After all three layers are painted, I add adjustment layers to put a canvas overlay on the image and I also do some dodging and burning in areas just like I would if I were editing an image, to highlight areas of focus and bring up highlights and shadows as needed.
The finishing touch is a digital mat. I built several actions that I can use to add multiple different types of digital mats to my images. I can select single mats, double mats and change the colors by selecting them right from the image.
Photoshop, clone painting, mixer brush, painting on photos, photography painting,