How to Make Portrait Photos Look Like Famous Paintings
- 1). Download and open an image of a famous painting such as DaVinci's "Mona Lisa." It doesn't matter what size the image is because you'll only use it to sample the colors. Open it in your photo editing software.
- 2). Create a new gradient from the painting. Click on the gradient tool, then click "Edit" on the top menu. This will bring up the Gradient Editor menu. Click along bottom of the gradient bar to create new color points. Click on each of the little rectangles and, using the eyedropper tool, sample colors in the masterpiece painting. The new gradient should have several colors.
- 3). Open your photo and duplicate the background layer. Reduce the color saturation almost to zero; the picture should be almost black and white.
- 4). Duplicate the unsaturated layer. Using the filter menu, apply a painting filter such as underpainting, palette knife or rough pastels. Change the layer blend mode to overlay, multiply or screen, whichever looks best. Reduce the opacity of the layer.
- 5). Create a new blank layer above the overlay layer. Apply the gradient you created from the masterpiece. Change the blend mode to overlay. Save the picture in a way that will preserve the layers.
- 6). Adjust the opacity of each of the layers until you have the look you want. Save it one last time with the layers active. Merge all the layers and save the picture as a jpeg file.
