Custom colours, Abstraction, Impression.
The impression was set to more extreme settings- eg large brush on Low, high width & length, some rotation with variation, small colour variation and painting progress back to a less finished setting.
As this loses the image a lot, even with Spill low, I get it back from the image I just used in Impression. Doing it this way establishes a harmonious, more abstract background.
To do this:
I dragged the original over the Impression one as an Image Layer… I often then set this to Luminance but this time I left it Normal. This makes the original disappear so I just see the Impression one.
I created a Layer mask on this Image Layer and inverted it to black; making the brush white so it is painting back the Original in the way I decide.
I then brush back edge detail etc that has been lost but in a selective way that looks more painterly. I tend to vary the opacity in the brush a bit too so it blends better and highlights what I want to highlight.
This is now a general approach I use a lot so thought I would share it as not everyone is used to working with masks and image layers.
I then took it into Corel Painter for some Surface Texture.
Yes, I am a Wacom user. Have been into Corel Painter for some years and cant really finction without one now! The original is from Pixabays generous photographers.
Thanks mate, after seeing the original I can really appreciate the work you put into this to make it as stunning as it is. Thanks too for providing your workflow - i am going to try it and see what I can do with one of my images. If it comes out looking half as good as yours I will post it on the forum.