As you saw in Hour 9, the Colored Pencil filter goes over the photo with crosshatching (see Figure 16.2). It retains most of the original photograph’s colors, but it converts any large, flat areas to “paper” color, which you can set to any shade of the current Background color. The filter’s dialog, shown in Figure 16.3, asks you to choose Pencil Width and Stroke Pressure values. Paper Brightness can be set on a scale of 1–50, with 50 being the lightest shade of your Background color and 1 being the darkest.

Figure 16.2. The Colored Pencil filter applied.

Figure 16.3. Colored Pencil filter settings.

Using a narrow pencil (a lower Pencil Width value) produces more lines, and greater stroke pressure picks up more detail from the original image. In Figure 16.2, I used a wide pencil and heavy pressure. To produce Figure 16.4, I tried a compromise: a smaller pencil and lighter pressure. As you can see, the resulting picture is much lighter and more delicate.

Figure 16.4. Less pencil width, less stroke pressure.

The Cutout filter can transform a picture to something resembling a cut paper collage or a silkscreen print. The filter accomplishes this by averaging all the image’s colors and shades and retaining only a handful of them to color the entire picture. You can decide how many colors the filter uses by setting the number of levels from 2 to 8 in the dialog. You can also set Edge Fidelity (1–3) and Edge Simplicity (1–10) in the dialog, shown in Figure 16.5.

Figure 16.5. The Edge Simplicity setting controls how much objects’ shapes are simplified.

Medium Edge Simplicity and Low Edge Fidelity settings produced the picture in Figure 16.6, which shows just one of the many variations you can achieve with this filter and photo combination. It’s important to experiment with different settings every time you apply a filter to a new photo; what works with one picture might be completely wrong for another image that’s more or less detailed, lighter or darker, or even just more saturated. Don’t forget, though, that you can also use the Adjustment commands to make any picture darker or lighter, or modify its colors so that it will work better with the filter you want to apply to it.

Figure 16.6. The Cutout filter applied.

Dry brush is a watercolor style in which a brush is loaded with highly concentrated pigment and dabbed, instead of stroked, on the paper. Figure 16.7 shows the Dry Brush dialog with medium values for Brush Size and Brush Detail. You can see the result in Figure 16.8.

Figure 16.7. Dry Brush filter settings.

Figure 16.8. Used on the right image, the Dry Brush filter can look very painterly.

One reason many commercial photographers have switched to high-resolution digital photography is to avoid the problems caused by film grain, the inevitable result of manufacturing film by applying a layer of chemicals to a piece of plastic. When a picture is blown way up, you can see the tiny particles embedded in the chemical layer as specks in the picture. If you want to simulate film-based photography, you can use the Film Grain filter to add interesting texture to your pictures. You can even apply the Film Grain effect to selected areas instead of to the whole photo. Figure 16.9 shows what happens when it’s misapplied.

Figure 16.9. Film Grain adds a spotty texture that’s more pronounced in dark areas.

The Film Grain filter exaggerates the textures of the trees’ leaves and the stone wall (see Figure 16.10), making the picture look very gritty. The specks tend to concentrate in flat areas. If I tone down the settings, it works much better.

Figure 16.10. Grain applies dark specks to dark areas and light specks to highlights.

Fresco is an Italian term for a mural painted on a freshly plastered wall, where the plaster isn’t dry yet. Photoshop’s Fresco filter doesn’t produce results that look anything like classical fresco works. It gives a spotty but nicely abstract feeling that I actually quite like. The Fresco filter adds a good deal of black to the image in the process of abstracting it, so it’s a good idea to start with a picture that’s very bright, even too bright for your normal tastes. Figure 16.11 shows an example of the Fresco filter applied to our garden step picture.

Figure 16.11. A fresh approach, but not exactly a fresco.

In the case of this picture, I like the extra darkness; I think it makes the steps look even more moody and atmospheric than they do in the original photo. Other photos might need to be lightened before applying the Fresco filter. If you’ve forgotten how to do this, or if you jumped ahead to the fun chapters, go back and review Hour 5, “Adjusting Brightness and Color.” Remember, too, that if a filter doesn’t seem to work for you with the picture as is, you can change the filter’s settings and try again.

Cool though it might be, the Neon Glow filter has no resemblance whatsoever to neon. As you can probably tell in Figure 16.12, the Neon Glow filter reduces the image to shades of two colors (the current Foreground and Background colors) and adds highlights around the edges of objects in a third color. You can choose a color in the dialog and specify the width and brightness of the glow. With a very light color or gray, it can produce an interesting watermark effect. Applied with bright blue, it turned my garden steps into a very eerie scene.

Figure 16.12. Neon Glow filter settings.

The Paint Daubs filter transforms the image into a soft-edged, Impressionistic painting. You can set Brush Size and Sharpness values, and you have a choice of several brush types. I used the Simple brush in Figure 16.13. You might need to do even more experimentation with the settings for this filter than for others. In this example, I used a Brush Size of 32 and set the Sharpness to 40.

Figure 16.13. Paint Daubs filter settings, including a Simple brush.

Normally, a painter uses a palette knife to mix paints on a palette, producing a far broader range of colors than can be achieved with the original pure oil paints. But sometimes a painter uses a palette knife to paint, and the result is large areas of smudged color that blend at the edges. It’s hard to achieve this result with the Palette Knife filter, but it can be done. I get the best look with a high Stroke Detail setting and a low Softness setting.

Plastic Wrap is one filter that I very seldom use. It places an unattractive gray film over the whole picture and then adds white highlights around large objects. The Plastic Wrap filter is supposed to look as if you shrink-wrapped the scene. It really looks more as though you poured craft glue all over it. The overall effect can be pretty drab. I’ve had better luck combining it with other filters to produce more interesting effects; for instance, it can make a good basis for a metallic effect.

Here’s a filter that I love playing with. Poster Edges locates all the edges in your image by finding areas with the greatest amount of contrast between adjacent pixels, and it posterizes the areas around them, placing a dark line along each edge. It looks pretty cool in the sample photo I’m using, as you can see in Figure 16.14. But it works less well with images that contain large, flat areas, such as the sky; the posterizing process tends make these areas look pretty patchy. If you run into this problem, try applying Poster Edges to a selected part of the photo instead of to the entire image. For instance, the best way to use the filter on a seascape might be to apply it to the ocean and the ground, but not to the sky, or perhaps to just the boat and the lighthouse, but not the rest of the picture.

Figure 16.14. Poster Edges filter applied.

Rough Pastels is a neat filter with an interface that’s a little bit more complicated than the others because you can specify canvas texture as well as values for Stroke Length and Stroke Detail; you can see the Rough Pastels dialog in Figure 16.15. Choose from the supplied textures (Brick, Burlap, Canvas, and Sandstone) or import a grayscale image of your own to serve as a custom texture.

Figure 16.15. Rough Pastels filter settings.

The Stroke Length and Stroke Detail settings seem to give the most realistic results in the low to middle portion of their respective ranges, but, as always, you’ll need to experiment to see what works best for your image. Figure 16.16 shows the Rough Pastels filter applied to the sample image.

Figure 16.16. Rough Pastels filter on Canvas.

On light-colored areas, the Smudge Stick filter adds a subtle, blotchy texture. And on dark areas and at edges, it also includes a smudge, making the lines heavier and the edges soft. Figure 16.17 shows an example. I like this filter, but you’ll want to watch out for overly cartoony colors when you use it.

Figure 16.17. Smudge Stick filter applied.

Sponge painting isn’t just for faux surfaces anymore; now you can turn your pictures into sponge paintings. They have a blobby look that can be really attractive with the right picture. It doesn’t work particularly well on portraits, but it’s definitely worth trying on landscapes. On large, flat areas, the Sponge filter gives a good imitation of a coarse, natural sponge (not the rectangular kind you buy at the grocery store!). In detailed areas, the sponge automatically resizes itself downward. You can set Brush Size, Definition, and Smoothness values in the Sponge filter dialog (shown in Figure 16.18).

Figure 16.18. Sponge filter settings.

The Underpainting filter, which you read about in Hour 9, reduces an image to a less saturated, lighter, and blurrier version of itself. You’ll mostly use it as an intermediate filter on the way to an effect rather than by itself. I like to duplicate an image’s background layer, apply Underpainting to the lower layer, and then reduce the opacity of the upper layer to put some detail back.

In Hour 9, you learned how to make a photo look like a watercolor, both with manual brush strokes and by applying the Watercolor filter. Figure 16.19 shows this filter applied to the sample image. The look isn’t really watercolor, but it has its uses. If you like the general effect of the Sponge filter but it distorts your picture too much, try the Watercolor filter instead. It produces smaller clumps of color for a more refined look. Both of these filters—Watercolor and Sponge—tend to darken the image quite a bit, which works fine for this moody image but might not work so well for other pictures. If so, feel free to lighten the picture before applying the filter..

Figure 16.19. Watercolor filter applied.

The Accented Edges filter enhances contrast at object edges. It can be subtle and classy, or brazen (which is the way I chose to go in Figure 16.21). The dialog has sliders for Edge Width, Edge Brightness, and Smoothness. The Brightness setting darkens edges if the amount is 25 or less; from 26 to 50, it progressively lightens them. In the example, I went with a fairly high Brightness value to give the image a surreal quality.

Figure 16.21. Accented Edges filter applied.

Both of these filters produce a crosshatched effect, similar to but darker than the one applied by the Colored Pencil filter. The Angled Strokes filter is less dramatic than the Crosshatch filter; Figure 16.22 shows both. Not being the subtle type, I tend to prefer Crosshatch, but you can try them both on your own images and make your own choice.

Figure 16.22. The Angled Strokes filter applied on the left and the Crosshatch filter applied on the right.

The Dark Strokes filter tends to turn the whole picture black; you’ll probably find yourself turning the Black Intensity all the way down and the White Intensity all the way up, even with a relatively light picture. Figure 16.23 shows a carefully balanced application of dark strokes. My settings were Balance, 4; Black Intensity, 1; and White Intensity, 5.

Figure 16.23. Dark Strokes filter applied.

The Ink Outlines filter draws first a white line and then a black line around every object edge that it can locate (see Figure 16.24). You can set Stroke Length and both Dark Intensity and Light Intensity in the dialog. Applied to a still life or a landscape, the Ink Outlines filter can give you the look of an old woodcut or steel engraving. Used on a portrait, however, all those cool blips and blobs can turn into warts, so proceed with caution.

Figure 16.24. Ink Outlines filter settings.

Remember how we used the Dissolve blending mode in Hour 9 to add some texture to an “oil” painting? The Spatter filter has much the same effect, only to a greater degree (see Figure 16.25). My settings were Spray Radius 16 and Smoothness 1. Applied with a light touch, the Spatter filter is a great way to add realistically random texture to images processed with another filter, such as Underpainting.

Figure 16.25. Spatter filter applied.

Sprayed Strokes looks like Spatter, but it’s less messy and more artful because it applies directional strokes instead of just splattering paint everywhere. You can even control the direction of the spray. Figure 16.26 shows what it does to the cottage porch. The settings for this variation were Stroke Length 13, Spray Radius 22, and Direction, Right Diagonal.

Figure 16.26. Sprayed Strokes filter applied.

Sumi-e is Japanese for brush painting, and the best sumi-e work out there is truly wondrous. The results of the Sumi-e filter aren’t always so exquisite. This filter turns any area with any sort of detail almost completely black, even at the lowest settings. It renders all dark areas in black angled strokes. One way to make use of this filter is to apply it to rescue a very light picture.

The Bas Relief filter uses the Foreground and Background colors to create a low-relief rendering of your picture, rather like a stone carving. If you choose the colors you use carefully, it can even look like copper foil or hammered metal. Because it seizes upon every scrap of texture, the Bas Relief filter is best used on pictures that have contrasting textures, or a textured subject against a flat background; otherwise, your subject will blend right into the background. Figure 16.28 shows what the filter does for my pots. Needless to say, this is not the kind of image on which I recommend using Bas Relief. The leafy background makes it too hard to pick out the pots’ shapes.

Figure 16.28. Use a dark Background color for best results with the Bas Relief filter.

Because the Chalk & Charcoal filter reduces the image to just three tones, you’ll get the best results if you set the Foreground color to a dark color and the Background color to a light one. The third color, by default, is a medium gray, so be sure you choose colors that work with gray. This filter can produce really beautiful drawings. Figure 16.29 shows the filter applied; notice the realistic shading around the tops of the pots.

Figure 16.29. Chalk & Charcoal filter settings.

The Charcoal filter does much the same thing as the Chalk & Charcoal filter, but it uses only the Foreground and Background colors and adds no gray, which makes it more difficult to control. Experiment until you are satisfied. It helps if you bump up the contrast in the image before applying the filter, especially if you want to make sure that details are preserved.

As with the Plastic Wrap filter I showed you earlier in the hour, the Chrome filter is generally not particularly successful. As you can see in Figure 16.30, it doesn’t really produce realistic chrome. To me, it looks more like hammered silver. The Chrome filter automatically desaturates the image when it’s applied, but you can go back and paint in colors, if you like, or tint the image using Hue/Saturation. As with Neon Glow, this filter is most useful on type or large, simple shapes with flat backgrounds.

Figure 16.30. The pots almost disappear against the busy background.

Conté Crayon works very much like the Chalk & Charcoal filter described previously, but with the addition of background textures, using the same interface that the Rough Pastels dialog uses. Figure 16.31 shows the pots rendered in Conté Crayon on a canvas background. Real conté crayons are always made in black, brown, or a range of red tones, because they’re made by mixing wax with charcoal, graphite, or clay. But don’t let that stop you from creating a masterpiece done in lime green conté crayon. With Photoshop, almost anything is possible.

Figure 16.31. Conté Crayon filter settings.

These two filters do very similar things, starting with the fact that both reduce the image to whatever Foreground and Background colors you set. Graphic Pen then renders the image in slanting lines, whereas Halftone Pattern renders it in overlapping dots. I’ve spent years trying to get the Graphic Pen filter to produce something that really looks like a pen-and-ink sketch, with no luck. I like to use Halftone Pattern, however, for a funky retro effect.

The Note Paper filter (see Figure 16.32) uses the Background and Foreground colors to produce an embossed effect, plus shades of gray for shadows. I have no idea why it’s called Note Paper; if anyone out there knows, please email me and fill me in! Meanwhile, the Plaster filter is very similar to Note Paper, except that it doesn’t have the same grainy surface; it looks more like freshly poured plaster.

Figure 16.32. The Note Paper filter applied with a fairly low relief setting.

These four filters have a lot in common. As with many of the filters in this set, they all convert your image to a two-color version of itself. The Stamp filter eliminates most of the detail, attempting to replicate a rubber stamp. Photocopy, on the other hand, retains most of the detail, resulting in the rather interesting image shown in Figure 16.33. Reticulation adds dot grain to the Stamp filter, so it looks as if you’ve stamped the picture on coarse sandpaper. Finally, Torn Edges is the Stamp filter again, only with the edges of objects in the image roughened.

Figure 16.33. The Photocopy filter applied.

The last filter in the Sketch set is Photoshop’s version of the wet-in-wet technique of painting with watercolors, in which wet paint is applied to wet paper. Unlike most of the filters in the Sketch set, Water Paper retains the colors of your original picture, adding crosshatching in the background and softening edges appropriately. The crosshatching is the only part of this filter that I don’t like; otherwise, it does a fairly good job of simulating wet-in-wet painting. (Not to be confused with wet-on-wet painting, which is done with oils.) Figure 16.34 shows this filter applied my pots.

Figure 16.34. The Water Paper filter applied.

Use a picture you already have, or download one of the three used in this hour (steps.jpg, sidedoor.jpg, and pots.jpg) from the Sams website. Try out each of the Artistic, Brush, and Sketch filters. Experiment with different settings and then try applying the same filter a second time, and even a third. Also, give the Fade command a try and see how fading a filter can make its effect more useful. Try applying a different filter over the first. Some combinations work better than others. See whether you can find a combination that turns your photo into a work of art. Make sure you remember the settings you use; some artists even enter that data in the File Info before saving the final file (choose File, File Info).