Step Three:

Next, choose a Texture for the brush. Click the arrow next to the texture shown in the box, then choose Select Texture from the pop-up menu to open up a palette of textures. Try out different textures until you get the brush effect that you want. In this example, we chose a texture that would give us a pointillistic effect, but other textures will give you a brushier, more angular or scratchier effect.

The Texture menu

Step Four:

Set the Density of the paint strokes. The higher the value, the more brush strokes will be applied and the more painterly the image will be. Since we want the end result to look more like a painting and less like a photograph, we set it to a high value.

Step Five:

The Stroke length and Stroke width let you set the overall size of the paint stroke, as well as determine the shape. For our image, we set these to be almost equal in order to create a stroke that is not too long, thus resulting in a pointillistic effect. When you adjust these settings, keep in mind that using higher values will decrease the amount of detail in the image. Again, it all depends on if you want to make the "painted" image more abstract or more realistic.

Step Six:

Next, set the Size variation and the Color variation. For both of these settings, the lower the value, the more uniform the stroke size and colors used. In general, using a low value for Color variation will flatten out the image, while a higher value will give it more depth. However, using a value that is extremely high will tend to make the image less readable.

Step Seven:

After you have made the desired changes, click OK.

The resulting effect

Here's a summary of the settings we made in this example:

Density: 80
Stroke length: 7
Stroke width: 5
Size variation: 40
Color variation: 40
Stroke opacity: 80