The Auto Van Gogh effect available in Corel® Painter™ IX.5 lets you transform your photos into Van Gogh-style paintings quickly and easily. You can customize the Auto Van Gogh effect by experimenting with the settings of the Auto Van Gogh brush.

Once you have applied the Auto Van Gogh effect to a photo, you can enhance the look of your new painting by applying a Surface Texture effect.

Original photo

The photo with the Auto Van Gogh effect applied

The Van Gogh-style painting enhanced by a Surface Texture Effect

To apply an Auto Van Gogh effect to a photo

1. Open your photo in Corel Painter.
   
   
2. Choose File menu > Quick Clone to create a clone of the photo.
   
   
3. Click the Toggle Tracing Paper button on the right side of the image window to turn the tracing paper off. This will help you see later how the Auto Van Gogh effect is applied to the photo.
   
   The white canvas is displayed.
   
   
   
   The Toggle Tracing Paper button is located in the upper-right corner of the image window.
   
   
4. On the Brush Selector bar, choose Artists from the Brush Category selector.
   
   
   
   
5. From the Brush Variant selector, choose Auto Van Gogh.
   
   
   
   
6. Choose Effects menu > Esoterica > Auto Van Gogh.
   
   
   
   The resulting Van Gogh-style painting
   
   
7. If you want to modify your new Van Gogh-style painting, you can experiment with the settings of the Auto Van Gogh brush. Simply undo the Auto Van Gogh effect by choosing Edit menu > Undo Auto Van Gogh. Next, adjust the brush settings on the property bar, and re-apply the Auto Van Gogh effect.
   
   
   

To produce this variation of the Auto Van Gogh effect, the size of the Auto Van Gogh brush was changed from 7.2 to 12.2. Also, Straight line strokes were used instead of Freehand strokes.

To enhance a painting by applying a Surface Texture effect

1. Choose Effects menu > Apply Surface Control > Apply Surface Texture.
   
   
   
   The Apply Surface Texture dialog box
   
   
2. In the Apply Surface Texture dialog box, choose Image Luminance from the Using pop-up menu.
   
   
3. Experiment with the settings to achieve the effect you want, and click OK.
   
   
   
   The painting with a Surface Texture effect applied. The settings displayed in the screen capture of the Apply Surface Texture dialog box were used to produce the effect.