Both artists and photographers are painters of the land. While artists may carry sketchbooks or palette and easel with them to paint the landscape colours, photographers bring their cameras, lenses and other accessories to capture nature's beauty. To accentuate the feeling that landscapes resemble paintings, post-processing can be used to apply various painting media such as watercolour or oil paint, techniques including crosshatch or different brushstrokes, and backgrounds of paper or canvas types, etc.

This processing technique can be used to turn an ordinary landscape into a more artistic scene, as colours may be brightened and mixed into adjacent colours for a soothing effect. Here is one example of a landscape that looked more pleasant after an artistic treatment.

Winter Field at SunsetAlthough the barren winter field seemed desolate, the multi-hued sunset colours turned this scene into a painting.

The paint treatment also does well for fragments of a landscape - in this image below the paint brushstrokes enhances the feeling of motion as the grasses are blown about by the breeze. 

Flow with the WindI watched as these grasses swayed in the gentle breeze, enjoying their carefree spirit.

If you like to focus right in on a subject, as I did in this photo below, the painting effect can work its magic here too. Not only did it highlight the main subject in the image with the vibrant ochre and white colours, the foreground water became more transparent showing the pebbles below, and the background ripples were emphasized in the darker azure blue water. I can see this painting hanging on my wall!

Snow-Capped TobleroneThe shape and colours of this rock made me think of the snow-capped toblerone chocolate, except this one is emerging from the azure blue waters of the lake.

Photographers not only paint with their cameras in the field, but are also artists when processing their photos, especially when paint treatments are applied. Which effect do you like best?