Transform a Photo into Chinese Painting

Preparations:

Share a photo of White Tiger that I took at Singapore Zoo

yesterday. Download it here.

We also need to download three brushes:

Bittbox’s Watercolor Brushes II (download)
Krako’s Chinese Stamp (download)
Midnightstouch’s Grasslands (download)

All rights of these resources belong to their respective owners.

Step 1 – Setting Up Background:

Create a document of size 750 by 550px.

Fill the background with #D7D7D7.

Step 2 – Cropping the Tiger:

Next is to crop out the White Tiger with Pen tool and place it at
the center of the document.

You can use one of the extraction methods listed over here.

Step 3 – Apply Watercolor Effect:

Select the tiger layer, go to Filter > Artistic > Watercolor.

Set the Brush Detail to 14, Shadow Intensity to 2 and Texture

to 1.

Step 4 – Adding Black Strokes:

Create a new layer under the white tiger.

Load the Watercolor brush that you downloaded from Bittbox

and select Sampled Brush 13.

Set the foreground color to #000000 and brush size to 450px,

paint the two patches as shown in the diagram.
Step 5 – Adding Red Strokes:

Create another new layer under the black strokes.

Select Sampled Brush 9 with size 250px and foreground color

as #cc0000, paint a few patches of red under the black
strokes.

Step 6 – Adding the Grasses:

Load the Grasslands brushes downloaded from

Midnightstouch’s DeviantArt.

Set your foreground color to #000000 and select Sampled

Brush 12 to paint a few strokes of weeds and grasses.

You may do the same with Sampled Brush 13.

Step 7 – Chinese Caligraphy:

This is the time for freeplay. You can add in any chinese texts
you think it fits the meaning of the art you’ve done.

Otherwise you can simply add a Chinese Stamp downloaded

from Krakograff.
 Step 8 – Changing Colors:

We can either stop at the earlier step or adjust the colors like
the one I’ve done on the left.

I created a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer at the topmost

and set the Hue to 40, Saturation to 25 and Lightness to 0.
Followed by another Levels layer and input the values 36,
1.03, 251.

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial. Click here to view the final
image.

Photo Repaired Original Photo Photo Colorized

The main tool used to restore this photo was the rubber stamp tool in Photoshop 5.5.
Even if you never want to tackle an image as bad as this, the rubber stamp is a tool you
should learn to use. You may want to fix small areas with bad spots or remove powerline
wires or other unsightly items from an otherwise nice photograph.

I scanned the image at 600 dpi. The higher the resolution you scan at, the more pixels you
have to work with. If you scan at 72 dpi you will have very few pixels and the changes
you make will be much more noticible. If you need some basic information on scanning
click here.
 Two tools you will use a lot are the hand tool and the zoom tool.
You will constantly be zooming in and out.With a high resolution
scan you will not see the full image on your screen

• Double click the zoom tool and it will reduce your image
to 100%.

• Double click the hand tool and it will reduce your image
to fit the screen.
Open your photo and create a new blank layer above the
original. Double click the rubber stamp tool and check
the box that says all layers in the options palette. This will
allow your changes to go to the new layer and your
original will remain untouched.
You will need to change brush sizes often. If you don't see
your brushes palette go to window/show brushes.

To begin zoom in on a damaged area. Hit your S key and the stamp tool will
become active. What you want to do is copy or clone the good pixels over the
damaged area.

Hold down the ALT key and click on the area you want to copy with your mouse.
When you release the alt key you will see a round circle that indicates the size of
brush you are using. Click your mouse on the damaged area and drag. You will see
a crosshair appear where you did the ALT/CLICK. This indicates the area that is
being copied.

You may want to click and drag or just click, move and click again. It takes some
practice and experimenting to get good at this. You may want to constantly alt click
and pick up new pixels to copy.
Double click on one of the brushes and the brush
options palette will open. Experiment with these
settings to find what works best for you.

I did one click and dragged the mouse in a straight line to demonstrate the
difference in brush settings.

Zoomed in at 400% this image shows what the result was using
a brush hardness setting of 100. The edges are much too sharp
to use on this area of the photo.

This image shows the result when using a brush hardness

setting of 0. You will want a hardness setting somewhere in
between. A setting of 0 will usually be too blurry.

Change your brush size often as you work on a bad area. This will help things blend
together more evenly.

If you do too much damage the first time and want to start over, just throw out the
top layer and make a new one.

To save time I traced around the image with the lasso tool and removed it from the
bad background. It was much faster to create a new background than to repair the
old.

You may want to make selections around some areas before you change them with
the rubber stamp tool. For instance, when you are working on an area of the face
that is close to the hairline. You don't want any of the face color to get in the hair.
Select the area with the lasso or another tool before you use the rubber stamp. Only
the area you have selected will be changed. Hit CTRL H if you want to hide your
selection. Sometimes you will forget that you have done this and wonder why your
tools aren't working in another area. I do this all the time, so now it is habit, if
something isn't working hit CTRL D and make sure no selections are active.

Need more help on retouching? View the Restore Old Photos Tutorial from VTC. Go to
Online Learning then select Graphics & Page Layout from the dropdown menu and scroll
down to the Adobe Photoshop Special FX title. You need to register before you can gain
access. The movies in the first 3 chapters are FREE!

Learn how to do Photo Restoration

Photo Restoration is huge area, because there are so many types of problems you can
encounter. In this tutorial, we�ll work this photo of an old lady somehow some part of
the photo was scratched off and has a little stain on the face and hair.

1. First open the picture in Photoshop, evaluate the photo and make a plan.

2. Before you do anything, make sure to duplicate the layer. Turn off the eye button of
the original photo so that it is not visible.
3. Zoom in closely now, choose your rubber stamp tool (not the pattern tool) and a small
soft brush. Follow one bit of hair up a wee bit, alt-click there to define your source for
your stamp and then follow the hair strand back down to the scratch. Drag your stamp
across the scratch. Keep doing that all along the scratch � alt-click for source, click for
target.

Do the same for the stain on his face, making your source for your rubber stamp very
close to your target.

4. Finish it by adjusting the color of your photo.