For this photo-art tutorial, we have chosen a rather difficult subject, the portrait of a beautiful woman, to put to the test the combinations of Photoshop tools and filters in creating a digital painting in the classical style of Madame X by John Singer Sergeant.
Save a copy of the original photo in the clipboard (Select All and Copy).
Open the Layers Box in the Window Menu. Create a duplicate layer by clicking Command-J (or drag the background to the New Layer Icon)
Set the foreground color in the toolbar to a gray tone (approximately 60% black) and the background color to white.
Click on Filter>Sketch>Chalk and Charcoal
Slide the Charcoal Area ruler to 6
Slide the Chalk Area ruler to 20
Slide the Stroke Pressure ruler to 1
Click on Filter>Brush Strokes>Spatter
Set Spray Radius to 10 and Smoothness to 5. Click OK.
Set the Current Layer to Luminosity in the Layers Palette.
Flatten the Image and save the file under a new name.
Click on Filter>Artistic>Underpainting
Keep the Brush Size at 6
Set the Texture Coverage to 20
Keep the Texture as Canvas
Slide the Scaling to 100%
Slide Relief to 4
In Light Direction choose Bottom Left
Click OK
Set Opacity to 80%
Create a second layer with the original image and set Layer mode to Multiply.
Click on Filter>Sketch>Photocopy
Move the Detail slider all the way to the right to 24
Set Darkness to 2
Click on Image>Adjustment>Selective Color
Drag the sliders until you obtain the desired color scheme. In this particular case these are the parameters:
Red Slider: Cyan 50% / Magenta 0 / Yellow 0 / Black 0
Yellow Slider: Cyan 0 / Magenta 0 / Yellow 0 / Black 50%
Green Slider: Cyan 0 / Magenta 0 / Yellow 0 / Black 0
Cyan Slider: Cyan 0 / Magenta 0 / Yellow 0 / Black 0
Blue Slider: Cyan 0 / Magenta 0 / Yellow 0 / Black 0
Magenta Slider: Cyan 0 / Magenta 0 / Yellow 0 / Black 100%
White Slider: Cyan 50% / Magenta 0 / Yellow / Black 0
Neutral Slider: Cyan 18% / Magenta 0 / Yellow -9% / Black 0
Black Slider: Cyan 0 / Magenta 0 / Yellow 0 / Black 0
