Editing photographs of paintings using Adobe photoshop

Adobe Photoshop for editing paintings

I started my painting BLOG somewhere in January, inspired by all the other artists of the world who have been so active. Some of them paint and blog almost everyday. It has been a great learning experience for me as well. As I move forward taking one step at a time, I realise there is so much more to be done and the art journey goes on.

I recently started My facebook page ie www.facebook.com/charcoalspastelsandmore . Therefore had to repost my new as well as old works on the site. Adobe Photoshop was on mind for long but I was just avoiding to use it but once I got into using it I have realised that it is not really that difficult or time consuming. Its just a matter of time and one gets used to it.

Posted below are my wet on wet water colour painitngs done some months back on Indian hand made paper. Both are small works and are done using reference photographs given by my friend who visited LADAKH. I want to do more of water colour paintings too but as of now am into doing soft pastel landscapes. Hence do not want to break the rhythm. 

Two water colour paintings of Ladakh Landscape

on Indian hand made paper
©Manju Panchal

My paintings can be seen on my facebook page www.facebook.com/charcoalspastelsandmore 

and if you like my work then you can share my facebook page with friends.

Edited photographs to be used as references for next few soft pastel paintings

The first step to creating a painting is selection of the next subject. The selection gets more complicated when there is a huge collection of photographs at your disposal. Hence I normally sit at night some day when I am not tired and then I go through my folder of different photographs. As a general rule I select four to five at a time and then get on to edit them.

Once editing is done as per the composition and light/contrast ratio that I want I save the images on my i pad for future use. Many a times it so happens that do not really use all the edited versions of my photographs. If I find something more meaningful and interesting then I suddenly change my mind. Its all upon the mood.

Most of these photographs as below are taken during our holiday trip to Matheran, a beautiful hill station.

One of them is from Karnala Bird Sanctuary.

Few edited photographs for future use as reference to

create soft pastel paintings.

When I use my own photos as reference it helps a lot as I have been to these places and I can relate to them. I know exactly the atmosphere as it was on that particular day and it helps to manage the colours well even if they have not been captured well by the camera. Its what I have seen that I want to paint. Nature is one of the most inspiring factors in my present art creations.