Here we'll learn how to create an abstract photo manipulation that looks like you've just painted the subject, I've included lots of useful techniques for creating impressive abstract pieces. I've tried to keep this simple but if you don't understand any steps then just skip it as not all of them are compulsory.

Preview of Final Results

Below is the image we will be creating, the inspiration for this image came from an image by Maciej Mizer, a great artist, check it out here.

Abstract Photo Manipulation Photoshop Tutorial

Step 1

Go here and download the image then open it in Photoshop. Now go Image>Rotate Canvas>90°CW to get it it looking like the image below.

Step 2

IN the layers panel create a new hue/saturation adjustment layer and use the settings shown below, the reason for doing this is that we are going to increase the saturation of the whole image at the end which would make the background to high in saturation so we are lowering the saturation now.

Step 3

We are going to use an image of a parrot; mainly because parrots are colorful but you can use your own image if you want, the one I used can be found here so copy this image into your document then resize it is similar to the image shown below.