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Rangefinder
Magazine Painterly Digitals by Jane Wingate Now and then someone looking at one of my digital photos will say, admiringly, “That looks just like a painting.” I never know whether to take that as a compliment or to take umbrage since there is nothing the matter with a photograph looking just like a photograph—with everything tack-sharp, nicely composed and perfectly exposed. When someone says a photograph looks “just like a painting,” he is—perhaps unwittingly—reinforcing the old prejudice that still lingers: photography isn’t quite the art painting is. Comparing photos to paintings is, for the most part, like comparing apples and kumquats. They are distinctly different from one another, and photography is—as those of us who labor lovingly at it well know—a fine art in its own right. Still, those of us who have become hooked on digital shooting know digital images often do have a quality (if a slightly elusive quality) that film photographs seldom have, and “painterly” is as good a word as any to describe that quality. When you shoot certain places and subjects that look like paintings to begin with, that quality of painterly-ness found in digital photographs is enhanced. I spent a month in Italy, shooting all digital, and much of what I shot in that art-rich, glowing land looked painterly, or close to it, in the original images. Other subjects I’ve shot with digital cameras also start off looking painterly and need no further enhancement. What is “painterly” to one person’s eyes may not be “painterly” to another, but when the term is applied to photographs, it means there is some quality different from the usual tack-sharp quality we expect in photographs. Toss in some Photoshop tricks, and many more digital images can be made to look “painterly”—though it can be challenging to use Photoshop’s assortment of filters in ways that aren’t overly obvious. Sometimes Photoshop aficionados will look at a photo and recognize which filters were used, thinking, smugly, “Aha! I know how that was done!” But as long as the effect is pleasing, and doesn’t look contrived, does it matter if the knowing eye can identify the filters used? Peter Schickele, host of a music-appreciation program on National Public Radio once said, “If it sounds good, it is good.” To paraphrase him: If it looks good, it is good.
When aiming for a painterly effect, it is usually wise to apply Photoshop’s filters judiciously. When filters are overdone, their effects can look too artificial. Using filters conservatively is generally the best way to get the desired effect.
In late November, I spent a couple of days in a 200-year-old New Hampshire farmhouse. I prowled through rooms full of interesting old things that glowed in the late-autumnal sun that slanted through the windows as it sank toward the horizon. In this house, with wood stoves warming the rooms, it was easy to imagine days before electricity. The sun would have moved around the house—just as it had done every year since this enchanting house was built—warming each room and its contents, casting a painterly glow over everything with its pale northern light.
When I got this image home, I was pleasantly surprised to see the 200 ASA setting was all this image needed to lend a kind of painterly graininess to the photo. Of course, it helped that the subject matter was already painterly. The image—the mellow patina of the 200-year-old mantel and the nearby closet door, and the bouquet of dried wildflowers in the old crockery pot—didn’t need much added to make it painterly. A painterly look of another sort came serendipitously in the crop of a photo of a peaceful Maine harbor early one foggy morning. The fog blocked out details of the boat, giving them neat, simple shapes. Just enough light fell on parts of the boats to highlight them and enhance their shapes. Painterly? Enough so, to earn the label. There are many ways to achieve a painterly look in digital photos. Not every photo starts off looking like a painting, of course, and some experi-menting will show us that not all Photoshop filters work equally well in enhancing or creating a painterly look. And again, what looks painterly to one eye might not pass for painterly to another. But with experimentation and imagination, we can discover what will work, and have a great time learning as we go, marveling with each new discovery at the digital technology and software wizardry that makes all these interesting images possible. Freelance writer and photographer Jane Wingate is based in Farmington, NH. She can be reached at her web site: www.janewingate.com.
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The shot of the interior of the ancient Umbrian church needed no Photoshop tricks to make it look like a painting. When a print of this image sold at a recent charity auction, the buyer effused that she loved it because it looked like a watercolor. I remember thinking when I took the photo that something in it seemed reminiscent of Renaissance paintings. It has, perhaps, hints of Vermeer interiors with light angling in from the side. And there are all those warm tones and shadows, a mysterious staircase on the right, a black votive-candle stand through the opening in the background and a trap door in the floor 
The autumnal colors of the tree-and-field landscape in the hills of Umbria (near Tuscany) likewise hinted at the rich colors of the works of the Old Masters. So, again, this photo needed little to look painterly beyond some minor tinkering with levels, saturation and contrast. 
For the flowerpots, the little girl at the door, the four church chairs, the hill-town alleyway, and the Tuscan farmhouse with brown fields and blue hills in the distance, I fiddled with levels, saturation, and contrast then applied smart blur. I took care to adjust the amount of the filter so throughout the images, no areas stood out as too blurred. The trick with the hill town alleyway was to keep an eye on the cracks in the cobblestones, being careful not to eliminate them altogether. The image of the Tuscan farmhouse and fields was cropped and blown up from a larger image. In that case smart blur had the additional benefit of smoothing over any noisy, pixilated edges. 
Dry Brush is another good filter to use for a painterly effect. I used it on the images of the group of stone houses, the tobacco fields and farmhouses in fog, the steep alleyway of an Umbrian town and the house with the paving-stone garden path. For the latter photo, I used a more heavy-handed approach with the dry brush, since the foliage could take a liberal dose of that filter well.
The Italian countryside doesn’t, of course, have a monopoly on painterly digital photos. 
Beyond tinkering with levels and a little contrast, I didn’t need to do any-thing with the image of the old glass-fronted cupboard and the reflected curtains and window. Likewise, I couldn’t add anything to the old mirror, which acted as a rich, natural frame for the reflected objects. I shot the mirror image just before the sun slid behind the trees at the edge of the wide pasture west of the house. 
The sun was higher the second day I roamed the house, staring and shooting my way through the rooms. In the image of the richly green dining room, with the kitchen framed by the door, the light, though strong enough in the house at the time, was still wan. For this image I beefed up the saturation and applied the smart blur filter generously. Using this method, I smoothed out the floor mat in the kitchen, and gave other objects (for instance, the old rocker in the kitchen) a blocky look more characteristic of paintings than photographs. I discovered, as I shot, and later, as I worked on these images, it didn’t take much digital-darkroom manipulation, to make painterly images from this house that—fortunately for me—had not been slickly “restored.” I was shooting, as I had at so many Italian places, things that were there before the first cameras came along. 
Just before the sun went down on the second day of my prowling around the old house, I set my camera at 200 ASA to capture the flowerpot on the wood stove in front of the old, original mantel. (The day was not cold enough for all the stoves to be lit.) The orange glow in the upper right is the reflected sun, just before it went down. 