Just about everybody owns and uses a digital camera these days, and PhotoImpact offers you many ways to transform your digital images into something special. There are so many special effects to choose from that it can be difficult to decide on one for your image. The Artistic group of effects can turn your digital photos into painterly works of art. In this tutorial, we will show you how to turn this photo of flowers into an impressionist painting, and as a finishing touch, add a frame to the finished artwork. Click here to download the original flower image and use it to follow along with the tutorial.

The original image

Customizing and Applying the Impressionist Effect

Step One:

Open an image, then select Effect: Artistic - Impressionist. In the dialog box that appears, you will see versions of the image before and after applying the effect. Zoom in to view the actual size of the images, so that you can see exactly how the effect will be applied.

The Impressionist dialog box

Step Two:

First, let's make some basic settings. Set the Stroke opacity to a high value so that the paint strokes are clearly visible. This also makes it easier to see how the other settings will affect the image. At the end of the tutorial, if you want to lessen the painting effect, you can always go back and enter a lower value.