Photoshop’s Oil Paint Filter

Summer wildflowers Multiple exposure

While I enjoy winter photography in Northern Ontario there are stretches of time when the camera remains inactive. We have been experiencing a ‘normal’ winter this year and there have been periods of extreme cold, snow and overcast conditions. These conditions, together with a winter lethargy contribute to staying indoors a lot. One of my winter projects, apart from catching up on backlogs of recent material, website work, marketing etc, has been to comb the extensive file of transparencies, looking for hidden nuggets worth scanning and digitizing. While optimizing the raw scans I wondered whether some images might be suitable candidates for the Oil Paint Filter now available in CS6.

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Summer wildflowers Multiple exposure- Oil Paint Filter

People sometimes ask me ‘Is Photoshop CS6 worth getting?’ and I answer in the affirmative (although I am certainly not a Photoshop expert). I like some of the new tools such as the improved content aware fill, the crop tool plus the way pallettes and layers are now organized. One of the new filters in CS6 is the Oil Paint Filter. Generally I avoid gimmicks such as these types of filters, but sometimes it’s nice to fool around a bit. It’s hard enough overcoming the skepticism inherent with viewing digital photography these days- ‘C’mon, that’s photoshopped….right?’, but I subscribe to the notion that we are making pictures and not always making a purely documentary image of nature.

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For that reason I do enjoy camera movement photos, lengthy time exposures and variations of in-camera multiple exposures. See my blog post on Interpretive Images. With the current crop of Nikons (actually in-camera multiple exposure has been around for a few generations of Nikons) it is easy to create multiple exposures. It was possible to perform multiple exposures with film cameras too. It was just a bit more complicated.

As I processed my slide scans, I wondered whether an application of the Oil Paint Filter would produce pleasing variations of some of my multiple exposures and other impressionistic images. If I thought I had a candidate image I would optimize it, save it and then Save As xxx_V2.tif. Below are a couple of before and after examples to consider.

Spring Forest, multiple exposure

Spring Forest, multiple exposure, Oil Paint Filter

I thought the Oil Paint filter might also produce nice variations of abstract reflection images, such as the examples below. This filter can aslo be used to rescue otherwise hum-drum images that might be consigned to the trash. Images with cluttered detail, boring skies, etc. might be candidates.

Spring reflections

Spring reflections, Oil Paint Filter

Autumn reflections

Autumn reflections, Oil Paint filter

If you are interested in trying the Oil Paint filter, there are a number of ‘how-to videos available on the net available through a Google search or a U-Tube search. Below are the settings that I decided to use. As always the on-screen preview gives you an accurate rendition of the final result, which can be tweeked and saved and then re-saved using the history pallete. The filter remembers the last-used settings. In future versions I would like to see Adobe add ‘save custom settings’ to the filter window.

Oil Paint filter settings used for image examples

Autumn forest, multiple exposure

Autumn forest, multiple exposure, Oil Paint filter

Manitoulin Island In Spring

Burnett’s Sideroad near Sheguiandah

The “Island” is one of my favourite places for day trips and overnight photo trips. Situated in Georgian Bay Manitoulin is Canada’s largest freshwater island. The topography is largely rural and agricultural with many lakes, pastures small towns and woodlands. The Island is an extension of the Niagara Escarpment and Bruce Peninsula, its geologic base being largely limestone. Even though it is barely 100 km from where I live in the Canadian Shield, Manitoulin’s ecology is very much different from that of Northern Ontario’s ‘spruce/moose biome’.

A spring pasture with cattle near Green Bay

Spring is a favourite photographic season for me no matter where I am. Manitoulin offers possibilities to photograph rural landscapes, hardwood forests with flowers on the forest floor, waterfalls and the Georgian Bay shorelines, with their alvar ecosystems. The rare lakeside daisy blooms in these alvars in late May. In early May however I expected to see marsh marigolds and the blush of fresh spring colour in the aspens and perhaps the hardwoods.

As we so often seem to remark these days, Spring was early this year. Even so, I was very surprised to see trilliums in full bloom in early May. This is something I would expect to see much later in May. It was a bonus, albeit slightly disquieting.

High Falls near Manitowaning

Maple woodland with trilliums near Kagawong

Canada plum flowers along a rural road

Bridal Veil Falls near Kagawong

Fall Colour Report, Northern Ontario

Autumn is a frantic time for outdoor photographers. So little time, so much colour. We hope for an alignment of the colour planets- favourable weather and excellent displays of pigments in the foliage of the hardwoods, among other things. This year I was moping a bit, disappointed in the progress of autumn. The birches just weren’t doing anything and it seemed as if the maples were peaking too early. Add in several days of bald blue skies, which are OK to a point, and I was largely sitting on the sidelines. I have to be careful that this type of ‘seen it better before’ mindset does not influence me to miss otherwise good opportunities- one of the themes in my Close to Home Book.

In the meantime I got a blog post from Adventure Photography in Colorado. Cathy and Gordon will be leading a group to New Mexico (Bosque del Apache for birds) in December. Brenda and I signed on for that tour. Their blog post was packed with great pictures of Colorado Fall colour. That helped to nudge me to get off my eastern butt and get out there to see what I could find. Fortunately the weather was calm, making for great reflections around here, since we have so many lakes. Close to Home are Simon Lake and McCharles Lake/Vermilion River. The colour planets had indeed aligned and luck was with me as the maples had not yet passed their prime.

Reflections in Simon Lake

These two locations are minutes apart, by car.

Reflections in the Vermilion River