Impasto | Photoshop

But it was just a gray, metallic-looking object. To make it impasto , she needed to wrap her color around the texture.

Frustrated, she opened a seldom-used corner of Photoshop: the . Most digital painters ignored it. But Elara remembered an old forum post about “simulating impasto.” photoshop impasto

She created a second layer, a vibrant red poppy petal. She placed the 3D mesh above it. Then, in the 3D panel, she changed the mesh’s material. She set the color to the red petal layer. She turned the Shine and Reflection way down, but cranked the Bump map to 100%—using her original grayscale stroke as the bump. But it was just a gray, metallic-looking object

Elara had always been jealous of oil painters. She worked in pixels, in the flat, infinite grid of a digital canvas. She could mimic the color of a thick swipe of cadmium red, but never its shadow —the tiny cliff of paint that catches the light, the physical thereness of a real stroke. Most digital painters ignored it

She rendered the 3D layer. It took a minute. When it finished, Elara gasped.