Learn how to create a painting from a photograph. In just a few simple steps you can turn a stock photo into a digital painting.

1. Open your picture. The best types of images for this technique are ones that contain lots of color and texture. Landscapes and still lifes work very well. Peopled scenes are fine but lose-ups of faces don’t work as well because the facial features can become too distorted or smeared.

2. Optional: If your image has flat or dull colors, you might want to intensify them for the painting. Create an Adjustment layer by holding the Option/Alt+Command/Ctrl keys while clicking on the new layer icon. Choose Hue/Saturation. Move the saturation slider to the right to intensify the colors in your image.

3. Now we will make a copy of the background layer by dragging it to the new layer icon. The original background layer will be left as is and we will paint on the copy. Important: Save the file at this point.