How Do I Change the Style of an Image in Photoshop?

Changing the style of an image in Photoshop involves a diverse range of techniques, from applying AI-powered filters to intricate manual adjustments of color, tone, and texture. Photoshop offers powerful tools to transform the look and feel of your photographs, whether you aim for a vintage aesthetic, a painterly effect, or a modern, dream-like quality.

Leveraging AI with Neural Filters for Style Transfer

One of the most innovative and straightforward ways to dramatically change an image's style is by utilizing Photoshop's Neural Filters. These advanced filters harness artificial intelligence (AI) to perform complex image manipulations, including style transfer, enabling you to create unique artistic renditions such as dream-like images or to mimic the brushstrokes of famous artists.

Steps to use Neural Filters:

Open your image in Adobe Photoshop.
Ensure the desired layer (often the background layer) is selected in the Layers panel.
Navigate to the menu bar and click Filter > Neural Filters.
The Neural Filters panel will open, presenting various AI-powered filters.
Locate and activate filters like "Style Transfer" (you might need to download it the first time).
Experiment with the available style presets or upload your own reference image to transfer its artistic style to your photo. Adjust parameters like strength, brush size, and color preservation to refine the effect.
Once satisfied, select your preferred output option (e.g., New Layer, Duplicate Layer, or In-Place) and click OK.

Fundamental Adjustments with Adjustment Layers

Adjustment layers are non-destructive tools that allow you to modify the color, tone, and overall appearance of your image without permanently altering the original pixels. They are crucial for foundational style changes.

Accessing Adjustment Layers: Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer or use the Adjustment panel (Window > Adjustments).

1. Color Styling

Changing an image's color palette can dramatically alter its mood and style.

Vibrance/Saturation: Adjust the intensity of colors. Lowering saturation can create a desaturated or black-and-white look.
Hue/Saturation: Shift specific color ranges or desaturate them for a more stylized effect (e.g., selective color).
Color Balance: Introduce color casts (e.g., warm tones for a nostalgic look, cool tones for a dramatic feel) into shadows, midtones, and highlights.
Photo Filter: Simulate the effect of physical camera filters, adding warmth or coolness.
Gradient Map: Map the image's tonal range to a custom gradient, producing unique color schemes like duotones or split tones.

2. Tonal Adjustments

Manipulating brightness and contrast defines the image's overall visual impact.

Levels/Curves: These are the most powerful tools for adjusting brightness, contrast, and tonal range. They allow precise control over shadows, midtones, and highlights.
- Curves offers more flexibility for complex tonal mapping, creating effects like matte finishes or high-contrast looks.
Brightness/Contrast: Simple, global adjustments for quick tonal changes.
Exposure: Primarily for correcting overall brightness, especially for underexposed or overexposed images.

Artistic and Stylize Filters

Photoshop boasts a wide array of built-in filters that can transform an image's style, mimicking traditional art forms or creating abstract effects. You can find these under Filter > Filter Gallery or directly under the Filter menu.

1. Artistic Filters

These filters often make your image look like a painting or drawing.

Paint Daubs: Creates a painted effect with various brush types.
Poster Edges: Reduces the number of colors and emphasizes edges, giving a graphic, poster-like look.
Dry Brush: Simplifies images to basic areas of color, resembling a dry brush painting.
Cutout: Reduces the image to a series of flat color areas, ideal for graphic styles.

2. Stylize Filters

These filters apply unique visual effects by displacing pixels and enhancing contours.

Oil Paint: (Found directly under Filter > Stylize > Oil Paint) Provides realistic oil painting effects with controls for brush size, sharpness, and lighting.
Find Edges: Identifies and highlights the edges in an image, useful for creating outline effects.
Emboss: Creates a raised or recessed effect on the image, making it appear carved.

Incorporating Textures and Overlays

Adding textures and overlays can introduce depth, grit, vintage appeal, or atmospheric effects.

Applying a Texture:
1. Open your desired texture image as a new layer above your main image.
2. Experiment with Blend Modes (e.g., Multiply, Overlay, Soft Light) in the Layers panel to integrate the texture naturally.
3. Adjust the layer's Opacity to control the intensity of the texture.
4. Use Layer Masks to selectively reveal or hide parts of the texture.
Adding Light Leaks or Dust Overlays: Similar to textures, these can be placed on top and blended to create aged or cinematic looks.

Advanced Techniques: Blend Modes and Layer Styles

1. Creative Blend Modes

Blend modes determine how a layer's pixels interact with the pixels on the layers beneath it. They are fundamental for integrating multiple elements and creating unique stylistic effects.

Blend Mode Group	Common Uses for Style Change
Darken	`Multiply`, `Darken`: Good for darkening images, adding shadows, or integrating dark textures.
Lighten	`Screen`, `Lighten`: Excellent for brightening, creating glows, or integrating light effects.
Contrast	`Overlay`, `Soft Light`, `Hard Light`: Ideal for increasing contrast, adding vibrancy, or blending textures and color overlays. `Overlay` and `Soft Light` are popular for subtle style boosts.
Inversion	`Difference`, `Exclusion`: Create abstract, often psychedelic, effects.
Component	`Hue`, `Saturation`, `Color`, `Luminosity`: Isolate or transfer specific color/tonal components from one layer to another, invaluable for precise color grading and stylized effects.

2. Layer Styles

Layer styles apply effects directly to a layer's content, such as shadows, glows, and bevels. While often used for text and shapes, they can also add subtle stylistic touches to image layers.

Outer Glow/Inner Glow: Can create atmospheric effects or highlight edges.
Color Overlay/Gradient Overlay: Apply a solid color or gradient tint to an entire layer, which can be very effective when combined with blend modes and opacity adjustments for a colorized style.

Comprehensive Styling with Camera Raw Filter

The Filter > Camera Raw Filter is a powerful, non-destructive tool that brings many of Lightroom's editing capabilities directly into Photoshop. It's excellent for making broad stylistic changes to color, tone, detail, and geometry.

Basic Panel: Adjust white balance, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, texture, clarity, and vibrance/saturation for a complete foundational style.
Color Mixer: Precisely adjust the hue, saturation, and luminance of individual color ranges.
Split Toning: Add different color casts to highlights and shadows, creating sophisticated color grades.
Effects Panel: Apply grain, vignetting, or dehaze for atmospheric or vintage looks.

By combining these diverse tools and techniques, you can effectively change the style of an image in Photoshop to achieve virtually any desired aesthetic.