As mentioned above, CS6 does have an oil painting filter which does a good job on some photos. In the example below, I just ran the oil painting filter on one of my older photos. Used the filter on a copy of the original image, placed it above the original in photoshop, and masked out the eyes so you could see the originals "Underneath". Worked out fairly well and took all of a minute.
You can also lessen the effect by just turning down the opacity of the "painted" layer, which would make it more like the image you had as an example.
The larger size version can be found here:
http://vonmoses.com/hosted_images/oil_painting.jpg
Von Moses Photography wrote: As mentioned above, CS6 does have an oil painting filter which does a good job on some photos. In the example below, I just ran the oil painting filter on one of my older photos. Used the filter on a copy of the original image, placed it above the original in photoshop, and masked out the eyes so you could see the originals "Underneath". Worked out fairly well and took all of a minute.
You can also lessen the effect by just turning down the opacity of the "painted" layer, which would make it more like the image you had as an example.
The larger size version can be found here:
http://vonmoses.com/hosted_images/oil_painting.jpg
I've seen the retoucher/artist's work around and in a thread where someone asked how he got his final edit, he explained that he ran the image through several programs, including Imagenomic Portraiture, one of the Topaz plugins, Alien Skin, and also hand-painting in Photoshop with a tablet, I believe. I can try to find the post, but I think he mentioned it was a process.