What gives this portrait a painterly look, and how can I create that effect in my own photos?
Asked 11/8/2022
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I found a portrait on Flickr that feels more like a painting than a typical photograph, and I’m trying to understand why. It looks slightly soft, with muted colors and strong shadow areas, but when I lift the dark shadows there still seems to be a lot of detail. I’ve tried creating a similar effect in my own images by lifting shadows and recovering highlights so there’s less pure black and white, but the result still doesn’t feel the same. What visual or technical factors usually make a photo look “painterly”? Is it mainly post-processing, or is it more about the lighting and scene itself?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
3y ago
2 Answers
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I think the reasons why you see John Starkey's photography as a painting have more to do with perceptual aspects than technical ones.
Light
The main element is light. The spotlights on a head or a face immediately transport us to Caravaggio's oil paintings where the point of light focuses on the main dramatic object of the representation.
Caravaggio - Saint Jerome Writing
Character
The character's face has a somewhat cartoonish grimace that distances it from a real representation, more typical of an illustration or painting than a photograph.
Color
The low degree of saturation and tonal value of the colors correspond more to those obtained with pigments from paintings prior to the 20th century than to the colors of a current photograph. Both cyan and magenta have been incorporated into photography after 1900, so any image that replaces those colors with the old blue and red changes its appearance completely. In the example image below, a current photograph CMYK mode at the left, and the same image multi-channeled in Photoshop with the magenta and cyan channels swapped for red and blue respectively.
Lights and shadows change drastically modifying their appearance for something even unreal (check the background, hair, skin and hands)
Originally by user85449. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user85449
3y ago
0
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The main reason is probably the lighting, not a special filter. A painterly look often comes from classic, directional light: one strong source with limited fill, so the face or subject is lit clearly while much of the frame falls into deep shadow. That kind of dramatic light is strongly associated with old paintings.
Other factors help reinforce it:
- muted, less saturated color
- preserved detail in shadows, even when they appear very dark
- a simple, carefully controlled tonal range
- an expressive subject or scene that feels more like an illustration than a snapshot
- possibly a slight softness, but that’s secondary
So post-processing can enhance the effect, but it usually can’t create it from scratch. Adjusting shadows/highlights, lowering saturation, and controlling contrast may help, but if the original light is flat, it won’t feel the same.
Your example and the Flickr portrait aren’t directly comparable if the lighting is very different. If you want this look, start by studying painterly portrait lighting: a single window or lamp, strong shadow areas, subtle fill, and careful subject/background separation. The “painting” impression is often more perceptual and compositional than a result of any one editing trick.
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