I have always been fascinated by the ability to turn a digital photograph into a digital painting.  However, I have seen some really good attempts and some really bad attempts at this process.  Last year, I spend numerous of hours learning the various techniques and styles that can be accomplished inside several different software packages, like Adobe Photoshop CS5, Corel Painter Essential 4.0, and Autodesk Sketchbook 2011.

Now, I feel confident enough to share my examples of a couple images that I transformed into digital paintings.  This first example is of a Bridal portrait session that I photographed last year.  Here is the original images after I had apply my standard editing processes on it using Lightroom.

Here is an example of the same image that I applied my new Digital Editing techniques.

Mostly, the techniques I used were a variety of Blurring Filter, Sharpening Filters, and the new Mixer Brush command found only in Photoshop CS5 and the upcoming CS6.

However, none of these techniques could have been accomplished without the use of my new Wacom Graphic Tablet.  Last year, Wacom release a whole new series of graphic tablets that are the upgrade versions of their Bamboo series.  Thus, I bought the new “Bamboo Create” model the same week it was released.

This is the largest of the Bamboo series.  It has roughly a 6″x9″ drawing surface with 1024 level of pressure sensitivity levels.  It is still portable enough that I can carry it in my laptop bag.  This instrument has been a big asset to my digital editing skills.  Being an Architect, I have used Graphic Tablets for years.  Now, in my digital editing workflow, I can get the same realistic style and feel of drawing with a pen like Stylus.  I can create certain types of brush strokes with hand moving gestures just like I was actually drawing on real piece of paper.  To me, it is more natural movement as opposed to drawing with a clunky mouse.  Today, I do not edit anything with out it.