Photoshop action "Cartoon": Painterly oil paint look for your photos

Cartoon meets oil paint - and your pictures look like they've been painted

Graceful like a painting and colored like a modern cartoon - give your motifs full color coverage and outline them with oily dabs. You can freely adjust the color of the background.

One Photoshop action for all your images

Photoshop offers you all the tools and functions you need to recreate the intense and opaque effect of oil paints digitally. However, to rework a picture as shown, you would normally need minutes to hours. So how about an extremely time-saving shortcut? You can use the Photoshop action to automatically create the oil paint look that will magically appear on your subject. If you're interested in more artistic renderings, check out our popular and top-rated Photoshop action packs Volume 1 and Volume 2.

Cartoon oil paint look: What the Photoshop action does to your images

What does the "Cartoon" Photoshop action do to your images? - First, you create a selection for your subject and color its area black on a new layer. Photoshop will then know which areas should remain in front of the monochrome canvas.

Then start the action and the look will be created based on the characteristics of your image. Areas with very intricate details are combined, such as the skin on the woman's forehead in the following example. In contrast, structures such as the hair are finely worked out in the style of an oil paint look . The colors are based on the specifications of your picture. You can then add a color of your choice to the background.

For entire picture series in a uniform oil paint look

The Photoshop "Cartoon" action can be applied to any motif. You can achieve particularly impressive results with both human and animal portraits. Just give it a try! Impress friends and acquaintances with a picturesque gift, for example. Create entire series of pictures in a uniform oil paint look in a short space of time and present the results on social media and in your online portfolio. Or how about a particularly creative employee page on which the portraits of colleagues simply look like they're flowing?