See how good you are at spotting CG

[j meyer]

19,got Cumberbatch wrong.

[Oshyan]

Hmm. As several of the commenters on YouTube point out, the end result in that "finger painting" video just looks exactly like the photo. And you see him "painting" in all this detail, but none of it is actually painterly, it looks like the painting of textures, if anything. So where did the textures come from? In the end it looks like a great finger painting that is then slowly masked away to reveal the real photo. It's still impressive, but it does appear to be misleading...

- Oshyan

[Upon Infinity]

Hmm. As several of the commenters on YouTube point out, the end result in that "finger painting" video just looks exactly like the photo. And you see him "painting" in all this detail, but none of it is actually painterly, it looks like the painting of textures, if anything. So where did the textures come from? In the end it looks like a great finger painting that is then slowly masked away to reveal the real photo. It's still impressive, but it does appear to be misleading...

- Oshyan

Photoshop has implemented a new painting feature (at least as of CS5) that replicates a photo quite well and very similar to how the Clone tool works and can, in fact, be referencing an invisible layer.  I tried it only once and it's the only digital painting I've ever done.  I only did one because I felt like it was too much like cheating.  I mean, the one painting I did, I also have a photograph of, so everyone would know the reference, but if I took a photo first, and only released a "painting" of it, everyone would probably think I was this brilliant photo-realistic digital painter, when in reality, I was merely utilizing a very quick and efficient "cheat".  This one took me less than 30 mins.  If I used a smaller brush size and took my time with it, I could probably get similar results.

Actually, now that I think about it, why am I NOT utilizing this more? 

[Oshyan]

Yeah, I mean, at that point it becomes like a "paint effect" filter in a way. Kind of old news.

- Oshyan

[Upon Infinity]

The "painting" has depth-of-field blur in it.     That's all I'm saying. 

[Hannes]

There's a lot of discussion, whether the Morgan Freeman painting is fake or not:

http://robertdaigle.com/why-the-morgan-freeman-finger-painting-is-probably-fake/
http://www.tuaw.com/2013/12/05/why-the-morgan-freeman-finger-painting-is-probably-not-fake/

[Oshyan]

Hehe, indeed: http://www.sebastiansdrawings.com/post/69093322933/please-dont-cheapen-genuine-artists

This shows *exactly* what I thought he did when I watched the original vid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDWdLY-qnms

- Oshyan

[Hannes]

So it seems it's fake...
This is really sad. I badly wanted to believe that someone can paint like that

[Oshyan]

There are some incredible artists out there that do really mind blowing work, so I don't feel so bad about it. This was just a little too perfect.

Look, artist doing actual art! (you can tell because he has a pencil )
http://diegokoi.deviantart.com/

- Oshyan