Fun Effects

Design Notes

​

For this project, I decided to create something that I felt that I could hang on my wall.  A coworker of mine, Andrew Diamond, took an aerial photo of third dam in Logan Canyon, Utah during the fall using a drone.  The photo itself is beautiful, so I decided to take the photo a step further and make a painting out of it.  Photoshop has some great filters that will transform a photo into a painting, such as an oil painting, but that was not the look that I was going for.

​

Design and Development

​

First, I took the photo and added a Cutout Filter to it, setting the levels to 4, 4, and 2.  Then I changed the blend mode of the first layer to Luminosity. I then added another layer and applied the Dry Brush filter, setting the levels to 10, 10, and 3.  The blending mode for the second layer was then set to Screen.  Making a third layer, I applied the Median filter, set the radius to 12 pixels, and set the blending mode to Soft Light.  Finally I had a watercolor look.

​

Next, I selected out the sky, which appears white in the photo, and added a blue tint, while editing out elements that were not natural, like an orange buoy line at the bottom-left hand side of the painting near the dam.  I also wanted to add a dark cherry wood frame.  To do this, I selected out a square portion of the painting, inverted the selection, filled the selection with wood texture, then added a color overlay to darken the textured wood to a deep red-brown, like cherry wood. 

​

​