Create a Painterly Effect?

There’s actually a filter for this, and you’ll find it by going under the Filter menu, under Stylize, and choosing Oil Paint. This brings up the Oil Paint filter dialog, but before you start dragging sliders, I would make sure you zoom in on your image, so you can clearly see the effect as you’re tweaking it (and before you apply it). To see the effect onscreen as you work in this filter dialog, make sure you turn on the Preview checkbox (near the top right). The rest, as they say, is art! (Note: If Oil Paint is grayed out for you, go under the Photoshop menu, under Preferences, and choose Performance. In the Graphics Processor Settings section, click on the Advanced Settings button and, in the dialog that appears, make sure the Use OpenCL checkbox is turned on. If this option is grayed out, your version of OpenCL is not supported to use this filter.)