Oil Paint Filter in Photoshop: A Painterly Look with Camera Raw

By Gabor Richter Last updated on November 15, 2026 Shown in: Adobe Photoshop CC 2018

Painterly advertising posters often look as if they were painted by hand, and you can recreate exactly this look in Photoshop. The Oil Paint filter provides the brush texture, but without post-processing, sharpness suffers and important details become blurred. In this tutorial, I'll show you how to apply the filter to a merged subject, set the strength sensibly, make targeted improvements with a mask, and finally round off the image look with Camera Raw.

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Key Takeaways

• The Oil Paint filter should be applied to a Smart Object so that you can change the settings at any time afterwards.
• A Cleanliness of about 75 and a Bristle Scale of about 4 are a good starting point; you should disable the lighting.
• The filter destroys edges and facial features, so you mask it with an inverted mask and selectively paint the effect back.
• Eyes, nose, lips, and transitions need particularly close attention, while the background can remain more generously painterly.
• In Camera Raw, you increase Vibrance and Clarity, set a blue split toning in the shadows, and control the orange tones in HSL mode.

Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1: Merge and Name Layers

Before you apply the filter, you need a single layer containing the entire subject. To do this, press the key combination Command, Alt, and Shift together with the E key. Photoshop copies all visible layers onto a new layer while the original layers are preserved. Then give this new layer a descriptive name like "painterly". This will help you keep track later.

Step 2: Convert the Layer into a Smart Object

Now convert the layer into a Smart Object. This sounds like a small intermediate step, but it is crucial: a Smart Object saves the filter settings as an editable property. If you find that the effect is too strong, you can open and adjust it at any time without having to rebuild the image.

Step 3: Open the Oil Paint Filter

In the "Filter" menu, open the "Stylize" section and select "Oil Paint" there. The filter is available again in newer Photoshop versions after it had temporarily disappeared from the program. The dialog opens with a preview that you should keep an eye on as you go.

Step 4: Choose the Right Settings

For the typical Riverdale look, the following values have proven effective: set Stylization to the maximum value so that the brush strokes become clearly visible. Cleanliness is at about 75, Bristle Scale at about 4. You should disable Lighting, because with lighting enabled, an unpleasant relief effect appears that is reminiscent of embossing. Also make sure the preview is enabled so that you can see every change directly.

Step 5: Check the Effect Against the Original

Use the preview to evaluate the effect. If you hold down the mouse button, Photoshop shows you the original image. When you release it, the filter effect appears again. This way you can quickly see where the filter alters the shape. Especially with faces, you should pay particular attention to hair, eyes, and contours, because excessive distortion is most noticeable there.

Step 6: Bring Back the Filter with an Inverted Mask

The filter now affects the entire image, and that is exactly the problem: eyes, lips, and the tip of the nose lose their shape. The best way is to apply the filter completely and then control it with a mask. You can invert the layer mask so that the filter initially disappears completely, and then paint with a white foreground color where the effect should appear. In this example, however, the filter remains active, and you only remove it selectively with a black brush.

Step 7: Work with Light Brush Strokes

Set the brush to about 33 percent opacity. This way you can reduce the area step by step. Three passes usually deliver the desired result, and you keep control over the transition. A one-hundred-percent brush stroke, on the other hand, would immediately create a hard, unnatural cut.

Step 8: Correcting the eyes, nose, and lips

Start with the eyes, because they are the most important area of the face. Paint over the eye area several times with the black brush until the original eyes are clearly visible again. The eyebrows, on the other hand, can safely remain a bit painterly. Then you pull back the effect on the nose, because the filter otherwise makes it look unnaturally rounded. The same applies to the lips, because the effect distorts them quickly, especially from a distance.

Step 9: Refining details and transitions

Small elements such as stud earrings, buttons, the zipper, and the fingers need a clear edge so that they remain recognizable. You should also check the contours at the edge of the image. Where the transition between the painterly and sharp areas looks too harsh, you reduce the filter with a light brushstroke. Make sure you don't make every spot perfect, because with a subject of this kind, the overall impression is what matters most.

Step 10: Assessing the overall picture

Look at the image as a whole and zoom out from time to time. The painterly effect on the background can be a bit less precise, because small inaccuracies hardly stand out there. In the face and at the transitions, however, you should work precisely. When you are satisfied with the result, you put the layer into a new group and name it, for example, "final". This keeps your structure organized.

Step 11: Using Camera Raw for the final finishing touch

Finally, you edit the image with the Camera Raw filter. To do this, you merge the top layer once more and convert it back into a Smart Object. Then you open the filter via the "Filter" menu. The interface offers sliders that you won't find in Photoshop itself, and that is exactly why this step is worthwhile.

Step 12: Adjusting vibrance and clarity

Start with vibrance and increase the value to about plus 20 so that more colors come to the fore. Then you subtly move the clarity slider to the right. The image becomes higher in contrast and looks crisper overall. Don't overdo it, though, because with the clarity slider it is easy to overshoot.

Step 13: Applying a blue split toning in the shadows

Give the dark areas a cool tone by selecting the shadows in the split toning and shifting them slightly toward blue. The black areas thereby get a delicate blue shimmer. A value of around 19 looks harmonious for this subject, even if it is a bit more than minimal. You no longer need to touch the highlights and shadows or the saturation in this case.

Step 14: Fine-tuning colors in HSL mode

In the HSL area, you control individual hues in a targeted way. Here you lighten the orange tones slightly and increase the saturation very subtly. You can also raise the brightness of blue and make the purple tones somewhat stronger. You should leave red untouched, however, because the original value already fits. At the end, compare the result with the before state by switching via the preview.

Step 15: Don't forget to save

Save your project regularly along the way. Programs can crash, computers can freeze, and without an intermediate save you lose your work. With a press of Ctrl or Command-S, you secure the current state before you continue.

Summary ??? Oil Paint Filter in Photoshop: Painterly Look with Camera Raw

You have seen how to merge several layers, convert them into a Smart Object, and apply the Oil Paint filter with suitable values. The real difference, however, comes from the follow-up work: with an inverted mask and light brushstrokes, you bring back the eyes, nose, lips, and edges, while the background remains painterly. Finally, Camera Raw gives you the finishing touch with vibrance, clarity, blue split toning, and HSL fine-tuning.

Trainer About Gabor Richter Gabor Richter is an image retoucher and digital artist. He specializes in digital image editing for agencies and photographers in the fields of people, fashion, weddings and advertising. All courses by Gabor Richter →