by Yan "Method" Ostretsov

I have recently figured out how to make a realistic painted surface on non painted surfaces such as wood, metal and concrete. Here is a preview of what we are going to do:

1. I am going to use an old wood texture as an example, but you can follow along with practically any texture.

2. Create a new blank layer. Then pick a Paint Bucket Tool and click on its All Layers check box, so it will keep other layers in mind when filling a surface. Play with Tolerance to see how much paint you want to add. The bigger the number, the more surface it will cover. Don't just click once in one spot, click in various spots. Then set the layer's Opacity to 70%.

3. Copy the background layer (original wood) and place it on top of the painted layer then set it's Blending mode to Pin Light. This is the BIG STEP that makes paint look real, rather than a sloppy Overlay mode. Then hold down ALT and click between this and painted layer. What this does is makes this layer to be shown only on the painted area. Also based on your texture you can desaturate the layer by going to Image->Adjustments->Desaturate or hit Shift+Ctrl+U.

4. Select painted layer and go into Image->Adjustments->Hue/Saturation... click Colorize checkbox and play with the Lightness slider. Now pick a green color in Hue slider and make sure that Saturation level is very low, so it's dark white or gray.

5. Once you are happy with the outcome flatten the image. Copy the layer and go to Filter->Other->High Pass.... set Radius to 1. Then set the blending mode to Vivid Light and it's Opacity to 50%. This makes the texture a lot sharper around the surface edges.

I hope you enjoyed this article. If you have any comments or questions you can contact me at yanostretsov[at]yahoo.com.