In Hour 10, “Advanced Painting Techniques,” you saw how Photoshop's filters could help imitate other media. You looked specifically at the Watercolor, Colored Pencil, Charcoal, and Underpainting filters. But those are still just the tip of the iceberg. Under the general headings of Artistic and Sketch filters, Photoshop offers approximately 30 filters that you can apply alone or in combinations to turn your so-so picture into a masterpiece. In this hour, you run through the alphabet of the Artistic, Brush Strokes, and Sketch effects. You will be amazed, boggled, confounded, delighted, and ecstatic.
Try It Anyway
I've deliberately left out step-by-step “Try It Yourself” exercises in this hour. You apply all these filters in the same way: Filter→Artistic, and so on. Use the dialog box and its preview window to judge the effects of the filter as you change the settings. The key to success with any of these filters is to experiment until you get the effect you want. If you don't like what you see when you apply a filter to the whole picture, undo, revert, or partially fade the filter. The Fade command (in the Edit menu) reduces the strength of the filter, or any other tool or effect, by a percentage you set in its dialog box.
