Tutorials: handpainting your photos

Handpainting a black and white photo with Adobe Photoshop CS3

When I was a baby my Mum entered herself and me in a Mother & Daughter portrait competition and won second-runner up. As a prize she was given a framed photo of me that was black and white and hand painted. When I was younger I used to look at the image and wondered how it would be done and loved looking at other vintage photos that had been lovingly hand painted for an intriguing effect.

As a member of Fix My Pic group on Flickr I like to turn my hand to using Photoshop (and other programs) to 'fix' or alter the photo of someone who has submitted their photo to be 'fixed' .

This week I came across a black and white photo and the brief from the photographer was:

I know it seems silly to ask to have this one fixed if its in black and white, but i thought maybe someone could come up with a killer idea?

Here's the photo to be fixed:

"checking in" by Today4u [?]

and here is my fix:

"Today4u notmypic fixmypic photoshopped" by vanessapr [?]

And here is how I did it.

Black and white photo by Today4u hand painted in photoshop using paths, layer adjustment>fill and smart filters. In this screen capture I have already coloured the jeans and hair and just finished the outline of the shirt with the path tool ready to be painted in.

First - I opened the file in Adobe Photoshop CS3 and clicked on the Pen tool. and clicked along the line of the leg and the jeans area. I moved the anchor points where needed.

Screen 1: In this screen capture I am in the process of using the pen tool to set anchor points to outline where the colour from the jeans will go. Once I have finished creating a path of the area I will convert it into a layer and fill it with a colour and set that layer to a low opacity so that the details from the black and white image will show through.

The jeans are now blue and I have selected the hair

Screen2: In this screen capture I have already coloured the jeans and in the process of colouring the hair using selections based on paths and filled with a colour with the layer on low opacity.