I have been asked a lot questions about the prints hanging in our dining room. If you have been to our house you may recognize these 20 x 30 inch canvas wraps. They started out as photos I shot last summer at the Appleton farmer's market with the intent of creating these large format "paintings". The process I used in Photoshop to convert the original images to digital paintings went something like this...
 

1. Increase color saturation of the photo to 80 - 90%. I did this because I wanted the colors in the  finished print to be bright like acrylic paintings I have seen.

2. Because I was going for large prints I increased the number of pixels in the image so the final image would be 240 dpi at 20 x30 inches. The original image from the camera was 3,872 x 2,592 pixels which turns out to be about 130 dpi when enlarged to 20 x 30 inches. I am not sure this step was actually needed but I wanted to make sure subsequent painting steps were being applied to a 240 dpi image. I used bi-cupic smoothing of the "Resize" command to increase the image to  approximately 8000 x 5600.

3. I applied the Accent Edges brush strokes filter. Command: Brush Strokes Effect > Accent Edges
   Edge width 10
   Edge brightness 40
   Smoothness 5

4. Then I applied the Diagonal Strokes brush filter: Command: Strokes Effect > Diagonal Strokes
   Directional Balance ~ 30
   Stroke Length ~ 40

If you are not familiar with Photoshop, this may seem like Greek. If you really want to dig in, but want some help getting started, give me a call. Or, if you have an image that you would like me to convert for you -- I would be happy to help.

I set out to capture the fresh snow that fell overnight. Thought it might be interesting to walk out onto this railroad bridge and get a shot looking back at the Lawe Street bridge. But when I got to the foot of the railroad bridge I realized this was my shot. When the snow makes a scene like this you can't complain too much about the long winter!