A breif tutorial using my new acrylic painting "Rainy Neighbors".
Your first step is capturing a great photo, perfectly parallel to the canvas, focused, and no glare! Capturing a perfect photo will save you a lot of steps in editing.
You can see my Raw File image fits the description. I placed my canvas on a music stand, and near two open windows for natural lighting. It may take you a few minutes to find an angle where it can be evenly lit. It happened that my canvas looked best facing slightly away from the windows, so soft light could bounce onto it.
I highly emphasize to capture your image parallel to the canvas, or you can warp your painting, especially with portraits. for example, your portrait painting could end up with a giant forehead and tiny mouth if you are at a high tilted angle.
Next step is editing your photo, start out by cropping your image.
(I am using Adobe Photoshop, any capable photo editing app will work)
The goal in editing is to make the digital file resemble the canvas as it looks in real life.
Here I noticed the left side of my photo is looking dull, I used a highly feathered selection to turn up the color's vibrancy, and adjust the highlights and shadows to match the right side of the canvas.
Color correction is so important! I did not need to adjust too much to this photo. (in camera raw) I changed the hue of the greens and blue to match the painting.
Do you notice anything in your painting that is not captured accurately in your photo?
Here I saw that my clouds did not show up in my photo well, so I am brightening the clouds in editing. I recommend feathering your selections a lot so your adjustments are not obvious, a high feather will prevent the disastrous look of harsh editing lines.
If your photo is unevenly lit (one side darker than the other), use the selection tool with maximum feather and circle the area that needs lightening, than adjust the levels to match with the rest of the canvas.
Save your file and that's it! Now your image is ready for posting online or creating high quality prints.
I have been using this technique for 10 years and it is second nature to me, maybe next tutorial I will take a worse photo to show more editing possibilities.
Thanks for reading!
-Kelsey
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