Extreme smoothing

I use a lot of my pics for Digital Painting.
One of the techniques that I like is using Edge Presrving Smooth in Paintshop to soften the picture and then "re-instate" the details manually in Corel Painter, to get some imperfection in the picture.
I have tried using Edge Preserving Smooth over and over again but it does not work.
The thing is ... I can't get them smooth enough e.g. if I have a shot of a bridge and boats what is the best way to basically take out most of the hard lines and contours? I find that blurring doesn't give me the desired result.
I use Paintshop, Photoshop Elements 6 and Corel Painter.
Please help.
Thanks

Post an example & maybe someone can help.

Unprocessed picture above.
By smoothing I mean making it extremely soft to lose detail. My aim is to add (sketch) the building and boat contours manually in Corel Painter. Blurring does not work too well for what I have in mind (see B & W)
I don't have a raw file, only jpeg.

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I think you have too much detail in the top image for the bottom image technique to work?

Try Harry's Filters Plug-ins For PSP

Thanks, will do.