Watercolor Painting Effect

In this tutorial, we will be turning a standard image into a watercolor painting!

Image published with permissions by the author, Julia Soboleva

Click here for Source Image

Step 1

Open our image or any image that you wish to turn into a watercolor painting, and proceed to copy the background layer four times and turn the first three layers off (make them invisible by clicking the eyes next to the images) and then select "Layer 1" (It'll be blue when selected!).

Step 2

Go to Filters > Artistic > Cutout and set the Number of Levels to 4 (this must remain the same), Edge Simplicity is 3 or 4, and Edge Fidelity is 1, 2, or 3 depending on the image that is being used. Our result will look something like the image on the right hand side and then set the blending mode of "Layer 1" to Luminosity.

Step 3

Turn on the "Layer 1 Copy" on now and select it. Go to Filters > Artistic > Dry Brush. We want the maximum amount of detail possible to drag ever slider to its max limit (10 Brush Size, 10 Brush Detail, 3 Texture). Set our result to a blending mode of Screen and it'll look like the image on the right.

Step 4

Turn on "Layer 1 Copy 2" and select it. The watercolor effect is coming together but we need a happy media... it needs to be blurry because watercolor paintings don't have all that much detail do they? Go to Filters > Noise > Median and set the median between 11-14 and then set the result to a blending mode of Soft Light. The result will look like the image below the layers panel...

Step 5

Technically speaking, our watercolor effect is complete; however, when juxtaposed with the original, our image is far too light and needs to be darkened quite a bit. As with photoshop, there are about a dozen ways to darken this image but only a few ways to bring out subtle details while darkening the image!

Make "Layer 1 Copy 3" visible again and select the image and the click on Filters > Artistic > Poster Edges with the Edge Thickness at 1, Edge Intensity at 1, and Posterization at 2 and then set the result to Soft Light with a 50% fill.

Step 6

This step isn't necessary, however, you can create an interesting combination of the watercolor painting effect and using the colored pencil filter in the artistic menu.

Copy the background layer (the locked original one) and rename it "Layer 1 copy 4" or not at all. Go to Filter > Artistic (Yes, again) > Colored Pencil and set the pencil width to 11, stroke pressure to 15, and paper brightness to 15 (brightness will always be relative to your image and will always need adjustment) and then set the result to a blending mode of Overlay and set the fill to 50%.

Our final result will look something like this!

(Click me for high res copy)

Remember that Steps 5 and 6 are completely optional and depend on whether you are looking for a more detailed watercolor painting effect or you are looking for something else. If you like the colors that are offered with the poster edge and colored pencil, you can merge all visible layers and add a slight blur to make it less detailed and bring up the levels panel to darken/lighten the image as a whole.