How to Apply Watercolor Painting Effect with Adobe Photoshop

Water Color Effect

We’ll learn how to without difficulty turn an image into a beautiful watercolor painting with Photoshop! To generate the watercolor painting effect, we'll use a few layers, filters and blend modes, and we'll keep the consequence fully editable using Photoshop's Smart Objects and Smart Filters.

This way, we will be able to go back and try different filter settings when we are done to fine-tune the results for your specific image.

This effect works best on images where rich colors and strong contrast are more important than fine details.

Here's the photo I'll be using –

Now here we start our tutorial-

Step 1:  Open image and copy the background on background copy

Step 2: Convert the layer into a smart object

Step 3: make two copies of the smart object

Step 4: Now you can see background copy, background copy 2, background copy 3

Step 5: Name 3 layer as cutout, dry brush, and median

Step 6: Hide median, dry brush & visible cutout for filtering

Step 7: Select cutout layer, go to filter > filter gallery > cutout > number o levels =4 ,edge simplicity=4 , edge fidelity = 2 > OK

Step 8: Change the blend mode > luminosity

Step 9: Unhide Dry brush, go to filter > filter gallery > Dry brush. Ten custom brush size=10, brush detail= 10, texture =3 > OK

Step 10: Change the blend mode > screen; the screen blend mode lighten

Step 11: If you think your image is getting over highlighted, then just change the blend mode > lighten, it will minimize the highlight

Step 12: Unhide the median, go to filter > noise > median 

Step 13: Set the radius value to 12 pixels

Step 14: Change the blend mode to soft light

So this way we can convert a normal pic into a water color

Thanks for visiting our tutorial

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