Digital Art

For my work, "Digital Art" is a photography I have worked on to make a "painted" look to it.  This is one of the first images I was satisfied with in this regard:

Boulangerie & Bike

The original photograph was take in Paris in 2005, not long after I had returned to photography and the new digital age.  I used Photoshop for color correction and adjustment, curves for contrast, etc.  Then I brought the image in to Corel Painter Essentials and work for several weeks, even months, on and off with a lot of experimentation before getting it the way I wanted. 

It was also, if memory serves, one of the first of my works to win awards at on-ling photography contests, including at BetterPhoto.com, Digital Image Café.com and Shutterbugs.biz. 

If anyone wants to try their hand at digital painting from a photograph, I suggest getting a copy of Corel Painter Essentials (download is about $50 on Amazon, compared to over $400 for the full blown Painter).  Not having any experience with digital painting, it took me awhile to understand how it all works, but it's a lot of fun and the results can be stunning.  More on that in another blog post.