Painting In Photoshop

Today we were looking at creating images in Photoshop to look like still life paintings. We were to draw a basic image of an object, in my case a simple cup. Once we scanned the image in and put it on our computer, we opened it in Photoshop. If need be, we could alter the curves or levels to brighten the image or darken the lines. Next, we changed the brushes to Dry Media Brushes and altered the brush's opacity. Then, using the Magic Wand tool we selected the area's of the image we wished to colour. Then it was just a case of layering on the colour the same way you'd layer on paint.
Here's my finished result.

Posterising

For this lesson, we learned how to posterize images. This was the image I chose:

 

The first step was to go to Image, Adjustments and then Posterize. I adjust the levels and decided the posterization looked best with 5 levels. This was the result:

 

Next, I went to Image then Mode and Greyscale to change the image to black and white. Then  I went to Image and Mode again but this time selected Bitmap. I changed the frequency to 35 and got this result:

Then I copied this image by going to Select All and then Edit and Copy. I then used Step Back to return to the posterized image with colour. From here, I pasted the greyscale image on top. Then used the layer tools to change the layer's mode to Overly. That had this effect:

Finally I added a new layer and used the gradient tool with a radial gradient to add a blue and yellow gradient to the image. I moved that layer between the Greyscale layer and the original layer and then changed the opacity to 56% This was my final result: