This speed painting of Luke and Obi-won Kenobi from Star Wars is one of the best I have seen. Cgsbgs manages to recreate the star wars figures as if it were a photograph.

First Duplicate the image that you are starting with by dragging it into the new layer icon in the layers palette. With the new layer selected go to filters> blur> surface blur and play with the settings until they are right for your image. Then choose filters> blur> smart blur>. To sharpen up the areas that you don’t want blurred use the eraser tool and reduce the opacity to go over the areas such as the hair, the lips and the eyes.

To see a tutorial on how to create this effect see: colouring a black and white photo.

Create a vector rectangle and colour it using layer styles. Please note that the select modify and feather options will only work in the same way if you are using the same settings for the size of the rectangle, canvas size and dpi settings. You can still use the same method but you will need to change the number of pixels to a higher or lower amount dependant on your settings.

Photoshop Speed painting by Ian Padgham from a photo by Man Ray

Follow this simple video tutorial to create a dreamy effect with your photos.

Despite the bad spelling! .. this is a good technique for changing the colour of hair using layer masks.

Speed painting of a character from Gorillaz by Emanuel

Create this liquid blob effect in Photoshop with a combination of filters, channels & layers.

A really quick and easy effect. Good for use when trying to add text to a scary photo. Could also be created with a white background with light grey and blue colours to create an icy effect.