Where Did the Oil Paint Filter go in Adobe Photoshop CC 2014?

Port Sanilac Lighthouse using the Oil Paint Filter in Photoshop

In April 2014, Adobe announced that they would no longer support the Oil Paint Filter and it would no longer be available starting with Photoshop CC 2014.  Adobe based the removal of the Oil Paint Filter on lower customer useage and the cost to support the underlying technology called Pixel Bender.

For those of you don’t follow Adobe’s announcements closely, it could have come as a surprise when you went into Photoshop CC 2014 to process a photo in the Oil Paint Filter.

Adobe did say that Photoshop CC 2014 will install side by side with the Photoshop CC 14.2.x version still giving access to the Oil Paint Filter.  However, this is an incovenient work around for those of us who typically roundtrip from Lightroom to Photoshop to process our images as Lightroom defaults to the latest installed version of Photoshop.  To get an image processed by the Oil Paint Filter from an older version of Photoshop, the photo will need to be imported back into your Lightroom library.

There are also other options to give your photos an Oil Paint look.  Photo processing software company AKVIS produces two plugins that give your photos a painted look: ArtWork and OilPaint.  See my blogs listed below for more information on these plugins.

Bring your Photos Back to Life Using the Oil Painting Technique in AKVIS ArtWork
AKVIS OilPaint Photo Processing Software Review

Written by Martin Belan

Painting Flowers using the Oil Style in AKVIS ArtWork
Using the Oil Paint Filter in Photoshop CS6 for your Nature Photography
Using AKVIS ArtWork to create Gouache Paintings from your Photos