--Hi all,
Some members' recent work (Carrie and Dave Fitzpatrick amongst
others) inspired me. So I tried a watercolor rendition of some
photos I shot in Nepal a few years ago. Here's one of my first
attempts. Any comment ?
Erick
Original :
--
Hi all,
Some members' recent work (Carrie and Dave Fitzpatrick amongst
others) inspired me. So I tried a watercolor rendition of some
photos I shot in Nepal a few years ago. Here's one of my first
attempts. Any comment ?
Erick
Original :
Hi all,
Some members' recent work (Carrie and Dave Fitzpatrick amongst
others) inspired me. So I tried a watercolor rendition of some
photos I shot in Nepal a few years ago. Here's one of my first
attempts. Any comment ?
Erick
Original :
--This has a very watercolor-like look, with the "pooling" of the colors giving some outlines and the fading out around the edges. What method did you use?
My workflow was kind of trial and error, trying to mimic the
real-world watercolor workflow, that is :
To recreate this in photoshop, I did the following :
- choose a nice textured paper
- draw a rough sketch showing the main outlines
- paint the large flat areas with a large soft brush and lot of water
- paint the details with a smaller brush
- bright areas almost receive no paint at all (the paper show through)
1. Paper :
2. Paint and water :
- create a layer and fill it with flat white
- add a Hue/Sat. adjustment layer to fine tune the paper color
- add a textured layer on top of all layers (overlay blend mode)
3. Sketch drawing :
- duplicate the original photo and apply the watercolor filter
- add a layer mask to mask the whole layer
- add a Hue/Sat. and curves adjustment layers to fine tune the colors
Here's a screenshot of the layers panel :
- duplicate the original photo and convert it to B/W
- apply an smart blur to the B/W, with edge detection
- invert the layer to get black on white strokes
- add a layer mask to clear the outer borders
- adjust opacity to make the outlines more or less visible
When those layers were set up, I selected watercolor brushes and
painted with white color in the "Paint layer" mask to reveal the
colors underneath. The brushes I used are called (in French)
"Aquarelle humide à pointe plate" and "Aquarelle à petite pointe
ronde", which could be translated to "Flat wet watercolor brush"
and "Small round watercolor brush" (don't know the names in english
version of PS). The opacity of the brushes was set to 100%, but I
made it sensitive to my tablet pen's pressure.
Try not to fill the whole painting with a flat and uniform layer,
but rather work by adding up thin layers of "paint" as you'd do
with real watercolors. If you've been too "heavy handed" on some
parts, you can always fix it by painting back the layer mask with
black.
Well, in fact, the workflow is simpler than it sounds. But for
those who are frightened by all this stuff, I made an action (PS
CS) which sets up all the layers automatically (with customization
steps), so all that's left to do is select your prefered brush and
begin to paint. While recording the action, I changed all the
default names (new layers,...) because I work on a french version
of PS. So it should run flawlessly on other language versions.
Here it is :
http://ggw.online.fr/dpreview/Actions/ErickN%20Watercolor.atn
Hope this helps,
Have fun !
Erick
--I took the liberty of modifying the action a bit...
probably not necessary for this technique, this command takes a lot
- Following the WC filter, I added Edit > Fade (Screen). Although
of the black out of a WC filter rendered result.
3-pairs if Stylize > Diffuse > Anisotropic + Fade > Diffuse
- Following the Smart Blur Edges Only/Invert sequence I added
commands. This allows one to soften the edges a bit (ala Gaussian
Blur) with more control. You can always Fade to 0% opacity to
negate any Anisotropic step.
Thanks again, Erick. This one's for you.
Danny
My workflow was kind of trial and error, trying to mimic the
real-world watercolor workflow, that is :
To recreate this in photoshop, I did the following :
- choose a nice textured paper
- draw a rough sketch showing the main outlines
- paint the large flat areas with a large soft brush and lot of water
- paint the details with a smaller brush
- bright areas almost receive no paint at all (the paper show through)
1. Paper :
2. Paint and water :
- create a layer and fill it with flat white
- add a Hue/Sat. adjustment layer to fine tune the paper color
- add a textured layer on top of all layers (overlay blend mode)
3. Sketch drawing :
- duplicate the original photo and apply the watercolor filter
- add a layer mask to mask the whole layer
- add a Hue/Sat. and curves adjustment layers to fine tune the colors
Here's a screenshot of the layers panel :
- duplicate the original photo and convert it to B/W
- apply an smart blur to the B/W, with edge detection
- invert the layer to get black on white strokes
- add a layer mask to clear the outer borders
- adjust opacity to make the outlines more or less visible
When those layers were set up, I selected watercolor brushes and
painted with white color in the "Paint layer" mask to reveal the
colors underneath. The brushes I used are called (in French)
"Aquarelle humide à pointe plate" and "Aquarelle à petite pointe
ronde", which could be translated to "Flat wet watercolor brush"
and "Small round watercolor brush" (don't know the names in english
version of PS). The opacity of the brushes was set to 100%, but I
made it sensitive to my tablet pen's pressure.
Try not to fill the whole painting with a flat and uniform layer,
but rather work by adding up thin layers of "paint" as you'd do
with real watercolors. If you've been too "heavy handed" on some
parts, you can always fix it by painting back the layer mask with
black.
Well, in fact, the workflow is simpler than it sounds. But for
those who are frightened by all this stuff, I made an action (PS
CS) which sets up all the layers automatically (with customization
steps), so all that's left to do is select your prefered brush and
begin to paint. While recording the action, I changed all the
default names (new layers,...) because I work on a french version
of PS. So it should run flawlessly on other language versions.
Here it is :
http://ggw.online.fr/dpreview/Actions/ErickN%20Watercolor.atn
Hope this helps,
Have fun !
Erick
--Hi all,
Some members' recent work (Carrie and Dave Fitzpatrick amongst
others) inspired me. So I tried a watercolor rendition of some
photos I shot in Nepal a few years ago. Here's one of my first
attempts. Any comment ?
Erick
Original :
)I'm glad to hear it works well !
That's all the fun with sharing knowledge. Play with it, change some steps, make the action better or simply different, and share your new ideas back with everyone. That's great !
I'll have a try at it. Indeed, I sometimes wished I could make WC less dark, and didn't think about doing it with the fade function. Depending on the original photo, it may be a great improvement.
I'll try this one too, it seems to make the outlines look more like pencil strokes. I like it !
Thanks again, Erick. This one's for you.
Danny
)What a realistic watercolor effect! Great job, and thanks for the
tutorial!
I hope I can follow the steps, they seem a bit tricky
Sue
--What a realistic watercolor effect! Great job, and thanks for the
tutorial!
I hope I can follow the steps, they seem a bit tricky
Sue
