Photo-painting with Monets color palette
The Match Palette effect in Corel® Painter™ X lets you match the color scheme of your painting to that of another image. When you clone images and create underpaintings, this technique gives you greater control over the color-matching process. By using the Match Palette effect, you can change the color and tone of a photograph to match the colors of your favorite painting. You can then clone and paint your photograph in the same style as the painting.
In this example, the photograph of a lighthouse will be cloned and painted to create an impressionist landscape that uses the color scheme of a Claude Monet painting.
To apply the Match Palette effect
- Open your photograph in Corel Painter X.
- Open the image to which you want to match your photograph's color and tone.
Monet's "Cliff Walk at Pourville" has a distinctive color scheme that will work nicely with the lighthouse landscape.
- Click the photograph image to select it.
- Choose Effects menu > Tonal Control > Match Palette.
The Match Palette dialog box appears.
- From the Source pop-up menu, select the source image from which you want to copy the color palette.
The filenames for all open images appear in the pop-up menu.
- Adjust any of the following sliders:
- Color — lets you determine how the colors from the source image blend with the colors in the destination image. At higher settings, more source color is applied.
- Variance (Color) — lets you adjust the range of the source colors. Higher settings increase the number of shades used from the source image.
- Brightness — lets you determine how the luminance from the source image blends with the luminance in the destination image. Higher Brightness settings pull more highlights and shadows from the source image into the destination image.
- Variance (Brightness) — lets you adjust the range of highlights and shadows. Higher settings increase the contrast between the highlights and shadows.
- Move the Amount slider to specify the overall intensity of the other settings.
Start at 100%, and decrease the amount until you are satisfied with the results.
The colors of the photograph have been altered to match the Monet color palette. The new color scheme adds highlights and contrast to the image.
To turn the photograph into an impressionist painting
Once the color scheme has been set, you can paint over the photograph to create an impressionist landscape. To do this, you create a blank copy of the photograph superimposed on the original, then clone from the original to the copy with an impressionist brush to create the effect you want.
- Choose File menu > Quick Clone.
This creates a faded-out copy of the image which simulates tracing paper placed on top of the original. You can then trace the image by using the original as a reference.
- On the Brush Selector bar, choose the Impressionist Clone from the Cloners brush category.
- Paint over the image.
You can also use the Straight Cloner brush from the Cloners category to copy image areas without distortion and bring out image detail.
To see the result, turn the tracing paper off by clicking the Toggle Tracing Paper button in the top right-hand corner of the image window.
Click the button again to turn the tracing paper on and view the original image as you continue tracing.
- Continue painting with a combination of the Straight Cloner and the Impressionist Cloner at low brush size settings until you are satisfied with the result.
The photograph has been transformed into an impressionist painting that uses Monet's color palette.