Making a photo match a painting...

[Jaybandicoot]

Hello,

I saw online people putting their dogs heads on military commnaders portraits and thought I would give it a shot. I made the below but think the dog heads could be done better to match the paintng behind. I tried using the oil painting filter and changed brightness and contrast. How would I make it look more realistic? 

[Mylenium]

You can't expect a dumb filter to give you an realistic result, especially on a tricky image like a black retriever or whatever dog race this is. This in fact has not even anything to do with PS, but rather a general understanding of classical painting. Most of those images are not "realistic" in the sense of physical plausibility and e.g. representing light and materials, but rather heightened representations of an isdealised reality. And that's basically where the wheels fall off in your case: Before even thinking of slapping on a filter to get the texture or stipple a thousand tiny brush strokes, you need to think about how an artist would render your dog's head. Simply said you need to paint over your image in a few places to increase edge contrast and depth perception bei modelling the light, not relying on what's already in your rather "flat" photo already. So start by painting some light strokes on a separate layer, experiment around with opacities and blending modes and then apply whatever filters and techniques to merged/ flattened duplicates. Same for shadows or specific structures that could benefit from being more rough and pronounced as opposed to the natural silky fur. Again, this is more about understanding traditional painting than anything specific to PS.

Mylenium

[didiermazier]

post your 2 pics : dog and commander and I will check what I can do… Obviously it ain't gonna work with dark dogs cause no détails… but with a sharp light dog pic it could be done…

[davescm]

I agree with Mylenium.

Sort out the lighting , lighting and lighting before you go anywhere near brush stroke simulation.

I took your first image and added two curve adjustment layers, to brighten and darken areas to match the lighting direction on the coat, a shadow layer on the coat, a Hue/Saturation layer to match the lighting colour and an edge layer to blend the edge colour with the background.

Then you can go on to match brush strokes etc

Dave

[Eugenio.NYC]

In addition these great answers, if you match the light source try to see also the darkest black over the eyes in my opinion are too dark if you see you don't have any deep black over the jacket and the eye catch looks like an street more than studio,

Just my opinion 

Good luck