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Simulating a photograph

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Is there a Photoshop function we can use to take an image that looks like a highly-realistic painting and transform it so it looks more like a photograph?

Best regards,

Doug
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Is there a Photoshop function we can use to take an image that looks like a highly-realistic painting and transform it so it looks more like a photograph?
This would be a fun challenge! Every painting has it's own character so I assume you are starting with a photorealistic picture. The things to get rid of would be the canvas texture by some sort of descreening method and the brush strokes.

Asher
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Stuart,

Hi Doug,

Easier said than done I suspect.
Indeed. But they were photographs once, so maybe the transformation is reversible.

Do you have an example of what you have in mind?
Well, here is a recent offering from Matt Halstead:

4727913241_7b35d0fab1_b.jpg

Best regards,

Doug
 
Is there a Photoshop function we can use to take an image that looks like a highly-realistic painting and transform it so it looks more like a photograph?

Hi Doug,

Not Photoshop necessarily, although there are some free PS plug-ins available. Depending on the structure of the paint and canvas, you could probably hide some structure by a Fourier transform, edit out the repetitive structures, and inverse Fourier transform. Whether that helps, depends on the image at hand.

Perhaps easier to do/try with "ImageJ" which has higher accuracy Fourier transforms than the 8-b/ch plugins for Photoshop, and is available for all OS platforms because it's a Java program. The transforms are to be applied on the individual R/G/B channels and then recombined int RGB. You can test with only the green channel to see if it helps enough.

Otherwise you may want to blur the image of the painting and resharpen somewhat if possible. You can try using deconvolution sharpening with "RawTherapee", a free Rawconverter which also allows to open Tiffs and apply Richardson Lucy sharpening on them. As said, it depends on the image at hand how successful that will be.

Cheers,
Bart

P.S. On the other hand if you were being a bit sarcastic and/or a real painting was not the origin, then Fourier transforms are not what you need ...
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Is there a Photoshop function we can use to take an image that looks like a highly-realistic painting and transform it so it looks more like a photograph?

I'd love to know what you are really talking about! Show us the picture which made you think along this track! Is there anything besides Matt's picture that got you going here?

Asher
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Asher,

I'd love to know what you are really talking about! Show us the picture which made you think along this track! Is there anything besides Matt's picture that got you going here?
I see these things here all the time of late, images that have been so heavily "tone-mapped" that they look like highly realistic paintings.

Best regards,

Doug
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Hi, Asher,


I see these things here all the time of late, images that have been so heavily "tone-mapped" that they look like highly realistic paintings.
So what is genuine nowadays? Genuine Nagahyde or genuine "fake" watches. For the latter, the guy, (in the underground market in Istanbul with that sign), must have thought that Fake was brand like Nike!

Asher
 

Ken Tanaka

pro member
Is there a Photoshop function we can use to take an image that looks like a highly-realistic painting and transform it so it looks more like a photograph?

Best regards,

Doug

Several contemporary art photographers produce imagery that might be characterized as such. German photographer Loretta Lux comes immediately to mind as an example.
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Asher,

So what is genuine nowadays? Genuine Nagahyde or genuine "fake" watches. For the latter, the guy, (in the underground market in Istanbul with that sign), must have thought that Fake was brand like Nike!
Many years ago, in Las Vegas, while I was attending a standards meeting (well, they had to be held someplace!), a colleague returned from lunch excited at having been able to buy, very cheap, a famous-brand (for then) wrist watch. I looked at its face. Sure enough, there was the manufacturer's name: Hawilton.

As to genuine, every image is genuine - it is really that image.

Best regards,

Doug
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Ken,

Several contemporary art photographers produce imagery that might be characterized as such. German photographer Loretta Lux comes immediately to mind as an example.
Thanks for that link. The work is lovely.

I note that, in contrast to the work to which my comment originally related, her work does not exhibit "extreme" saturation. The properties that make her images appear much like highly-realistic illustrations are are more subtle (I'm not sure that I could quickly characterize them).

Her images also do not make me itch to find the "undo" button.

Best regards,

Doug
 

Alain Briot

pro member
to simulate a photograph one could just take a photograph... what a concept!

Why start with a painting? Why not just take a photo of the scene you painted?
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Alain,

to simulate a photograph one could just take a photograph... what a concept!

Why start with a painting? Why not just take a photo of the scene you painted?
I have to apologize for having started this wild goose chase as a matter of irony.

I had been concerned that many images submitted here, actual photographs, had been so severely "tonemapped" that I would sarcastically say, "that almost looks like a photograph".

It was just one more step in my irony to ask whether there was a way that these could be made to look like actual (that is to say, "normal") photographs.

Best regards,

Doug
 

Alain Briot

pro member
Hi, Alain,


I have to apologize for having started this wild goose chase as a matter of irony.

I had been concerned that many images submitted here, actual photographs, had been so severely "tonemapped" that I would sarcastically say, "that almost looks like a photograph".

It was just one more step in my irony to ask whether there was a way that these could be made to look like actual (that is to say, "normal") photographs.

Best regards,

Doug
I did understand it as irony. But the whole point of making a photo look like a painting is that a painting is time consuming to create. A photo is not, at least not in the capture sense of it. Plus, "painting filters" were made for photographers, or for people who start with a photo and want "something else". People who have paintings don't care to turn them into photos!!!
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I did understand it as irony. But the whole point of making a photo look like a painting is that a painting is time consuming to create.

Thanks Alain! It also takes technique, devotion, patience and still he ability to express imagination!

A photo is not, at least not in the capture sense of it [a painting]. Plus, "painting filters" were made for photographers, or for people who start with a photo and want "something else". People who have paintings don't care to turn them into photos!!!

Yes, they "start with a photograph and then want to turn it into something else". What they want to do is to pass as being as creative and skilled as a painter is.

Asher


For those who want to follow the other side of the discussion, that the darkroom photographer, Maris initiated, whether or not digital imaging is truly photography too, is presented separately here.
 
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