Photoshop: How to Watercolor Images

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To create a picture that looks like a watercolor in Photoshop is fairly simple once you have learned the basics of Photoshop. Just follow these steps to turn your pictures into watercolors.

1. After opening your photo in Photoshop, make three copies of your background image. These layers over the background will create the illusion of a watercolor picture using various filters.

 CTR-J (3 times)

2. In the first layer above the background, apply a cutout filter using the values 4, 4, 2 then hit OK. Afterwards, set the layer blend mode to luminosity.

Filter > Artistic > Cutout (4,4,2 - Luminosity)

3. The next layer up, apply a dry brush using the values 10, 10, 3. Apply the filter by hitting OK and set the layer bland mode to screen.

Filter > Artistic > Dry Brush (10, 10, 3 - Screen)

4. For the topmost layer, apply a Median filter with a pixel value of 12 and hit OK. Set the layer blend mode to soft light.

Filter > Noise > Median (12 - Soft light)

Watercolor - Before and After

The following video by Altustek shows you how to apply these setting to a picture in Photoshop.