Photoshop Tutorial: How to Add a WaterColor Effect to Your Photos

One of my absolute favorite filters in Adobe Photoshop is the hand-painted watercolor filter. It's a great way to spice up ordinary or otherwise boring pictures and make them into works of arts and masterpieces. Now while this technique won't fit with every picture, it's always fun to experiment with different techniques and learn how to work with different aspects of Adobe Photoshop. So, if you're interested in learning some new skills, whether you're a beginner, intermediate or advanced user, this Photoshop tutorial is for you.

Before starting, you must choose an image to work with. Choose a good photo of your own. It can be a landscape, a portrait, an action scene, anything. If you do not have a photo of your own, or would prefer to work with a different image, you can always choose one from a free stock photo website. A great site to go to is www.sxc.hu or www.deviantart.com. Both sites offer free stock photos that you'll be able to use in this tutorial. Just remember to choose a photo you believe would look good with a hand-painted and water color effect.

Also, if you do not have Photoshop on your computer, you can also download the free 30-day trial of the newest version of Adobe Photoshop CS3, go to www.adobe.com. Anytime during or after the trial expires, you can always choose to purchase the full package.

Now to get started!

1) Open up the image in Photoshop as it's own document. Make sure that if you're copying and pasting on a canvas that you flatten the image by going to Layer>Flatten.

2) Now you need to duplicate the image. You can do this by pressing Ctrl+J on your keyboard. Photoshop will automatically name this Layer 1.

3) Next, you're going to desaturate the image by pressing Shift+Ctrl+U on your keyboard. The image will appear black and white, but this is what you want.

4) Then you will need to duplicate the Layer 1. Click Ctrl+J again. Then you're going to invert this new Layer 1 Copy by pressing Crtl+I on the keyboard. Set this new layer to the Color Dodge blend mode.

5) After this, you'll need to merge the layers by pressing Ctrl+E. Then duplicate layer 1 by pressing Crtl+J.

6) Next, while you have Layer 1 selected, go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur with a radius of 6. Set this new layer to the Linear Burn blend mode.

7) Finally merge all of the layers together by pressing Crtl+E again.

8) Then to apply the water color filter, go to Filter>Artist> and then choose any of the filters you like. For mine I chose the Fresco filter because it has a nice painted look to it. You can choose any filter to get any time of look you want.

After step 9, you're done!

Here are some additional tips:

If you make a mistake, don't trash the image completely. By click Crtl+Alt+Z you can go back and undo what you just did. You can go back a ton of steps by using this "hot" key.

Sometimes monotoned photos look great, you can pick out colors by going to Image>Adjustments>Variation.