Painting a Watercolor
Color Plate 38-1
Photoshop includes so many great filters. I love using them because they give so much in the way of results with very little effort. But, while many of the filters work well, you can enhance their effects, and make them look really special with just a little work.The Watercolor filter is a great example of a filter that works well; it gives you a nice image with the appearance of a watercolor painting. But, with a few tweaks, as shown in Technique 38, the watercolor can really come alive.I started with a Maine coastal photograph (top); I then applied the Watercolor filter to the image (middle left). Then, I copied the filtered layer and applied the Underpainting filter, set the layer’s opacity to 60%, and selected the Soft Light blending mode (middle right).Finally, I copied the filtered layer one more time and applied the Note Paper filter and set the blending mode to Soft Light (bottom). I think the result was worth the extra effort. There’s more detail and more texture.
