Adobe Photoshop Tutorial: Instant Photo To Oil Painting Action

Step 13: Apply The Emboss Filter

We have one last filter effect to apply. Go back up to the Filter menu, and this time select Stylize and then Emboss to bring up the Emboss filter's dialog box:

As I've circled above, set the Angle of the effect to 135%, the Height to 1 pixel, and drag the slider bar at the bottom all the way to the right to set the Amount to 500%. Click OK when you're done.

Step 14: Lower The Opacity Of The Layer

Finally, to finish off the effect, with "Layer 1" still selected, go up to the Opacity option in the top right of the Layers palette and lower it from 100% down to 40%:

Step 15: Click "Stop" To Finish The Action

Our "Instant Photo To Oil Painting" effect is now complete, which means we can tell Photoshop to stop recording the action. To do that, click the Stop icon at the bottom of the Actions palette:

And there we go, all done! Not only have we converted this photo into what looks like an oil painting, but we now have all of our steps saved as an action, which if you remember from when we started, I assigned a keyboard shortcut of Shift+Ctrl+F12 to, which would be Shift+Command+F12 on a Mac. So now, the next time I want to apply this effect to another photo, I can just use the keyboard shortcut, then sit back and let Photoshop do all the work.

Just one thing to point out, depending on how powerful your computer is, it could take a few seconds (or more) for Photoshop to go through all the steps in the action, so don't worry if you press your keyboard shortcut and things seem to be moving a little slow. Just sit back and let Photoshop do its thing.

Having said that, we're done! Here's my original photo once again for comparison:

And here's my "Photo To Oil Painting" result:

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