Tree Stump Photo Transformation to Abstract Digital Art

How the camera can work as your sketchpad for creating digital art.

This image was made by blending an original photograph of a tree stump and 2 AI-generated images created from the photograph. © 2025 Jo Ann & George Aiello, Aiello Studios. All rights reserved.

At first glance, the image at the top of this article may not resemble a photograph of a tree trunk, but that’s precisely where it began. Have you ever been drawn to capture an image not because of the subject itself but because of its lines, patterns, or textures? In this article, we’ll explore how a camera can serve as a sketchpad, laying the foundation for a digital art piece through the use of AI image generators.

About a year ago, we photographed the tree stump below with the intention of transforming it into an abstract piece. At the time, we weren’t sure whether the image would stand on its own or require additional refinement. By comparing the original photo with the final artwork above, you can see how we preserved the fundamental lines of the stump and bark while blending them with a soft pastel stucco or rock-like texture, textures generated from the original photograph itself.

Here’s how we did it.

First, we prepared the image by making some basic edits in Photoshop, removing some unwanted twigs using Generative Fill, and then adjusting the tones and color in On1 Photo Raw.

This is the original photo, as edited in Photoshop.

Original photograph of a tree stump after retouching and tonal adjustments. This image was used to make all of the other images in this article. © 2025 Jo Ann & George Aiello, Aiello Studios. All rights reserved.

With the preliminary work complete, it was time to move on to an AI image generator.

Experimenting with various AI Tools

We started with Leonardo AI, which is an excellent and flexible tool for applying textures and artistic styles while retaining as much of the original photo as you desire. However, this time, as sometimes is the case, the results, while interesting, didn’t quite match our vision. So, we decided to try Midjourney’s Retexture Tool. This time, we had more success. At this point, I should mention that “success” is a subjective concept when creating art. What I really mean is that we found the generated images to be something we could work with.