Building on Digital Skills: Photoshop & Painterly Effects

 I have used Photoshop for many years, however, as I am sure is the case with most people, I use the same tools and functions of Photoshop all the time and rarely do new things.  So considering this photoshop rut that I am in and wanting to expand on my skills I considered carefully what I would like to do on Photoshop that I have never really tried.  I have a love of all kinds of art and so I thought it would be great to learn how to create a painterly effect on my images perhaps for a project.  

As is usual with photoshop there are usually many ways to do the thing I want to do so let's try something out! Here is the first youtube tutorial I looked at:

Unusual Slider to Create Painterly Effect in Photoshop! by Piximperfect

Now I will follow this and show you my own process of following this instruction.  

First I need an image I would like to work with. I will use this one here: 

I am now opening Photoshop and adding my image.  The first step was to create a background copy of the image and this is what I have done here.

Next I go to filters and convert for SMART filters and I click ok.  I then go to filters and camera RAW filter and then a new dialog box appears 

The next instruction on the video was clearly in a different version of Photoshop to my version so I can see what the man is doing but now I have to work it out on this version - the 'luminance' that he is using does not appear as it does on the video 

I, therefore, begin to improvise I go instead to grain and increase this, then to texture and increase this, and then to clarity which I reduce and then I reduce dehaze and reduce the contrast.  All of this adds a soft effect to the image

The rest of the video seem to do just what I did and play with the filters etc.  So I thought okay I have not learnt that much! But here is the final image...

It is basically softened and perhaps does look slightly more 'painterly' however I think I want something a little stronger here and perhaps more complicated than manoeuvring some sliders and filters!

This was a good start and so I will now continue to investigate further options to build upon my Photoshop skills.