Here is a self-portrait I did with textures added and then finished with the *Topaz Labs Impression painterly filter.

Self portrait digital painting

Original Photograph And Textures

  • Self portrait photograph: (taken in 2014) taken with my Canon EOS 5D Mark III and the Canon 85mm f/1.2L lens. I did do a little retouching.
  • The Textures: This has 2 textures. I’ll do another post some time on how it was done. Note how the texture also brought light and warmth to the face and skin. Yes, you can also do that in retouching, but bringing a little glow to an image is something you can get with textures. The main texture used for the background and shirt coloring was Forty Niner from the Les Textures I collection. The texture was slightly blurred.

Original photograph and with textures.

With Topaz Labs Impression Filter

I quite like the textured photograph, but I love the energy and motion that that the *Topaz Labs Impression painterly filter adds. I’m usually good at naming my layers with the preset I used, but this time, I’m not sure! I do know that I used the Oil Paint II preset for the face and skin areas and I used either the Impasto or Monet I preset for the background. I often do 2 variations; one with small brush strokes and the other with large brush strokes and then I use a layer mask to choose which areas I want to have finer detail.

Tip: combine 2 Impression versions with different brush sizes with a layer mask.

The *Impression filter is now part of the *Topaz Labs Studio which works as either a stand alone program or through Photoshop and Lightroom. While it looks like Studio has interesting features, personally I won’t be abandoning my Lightroom / Photoshop workflow. I prefer to access it through Photoshop.

Here’s the final image again.

Portrait with textures and the Topaz Impression filter.

*Topaz Labs Filters is an affiliate link. I get a small commission from any sales resulting from a click from this site (at no extra cost to you.) I really do love these filters. Nearly all of my own images use one of these filters. Thank you for supporting the site!

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Leslie Nicole
Leslie Nicole

American Photographer and Designer living in France with my French husband, 2 Weimaraners and Cat Rescues. Camera, Mac, studio, garden.