One of the very best things about iPHOTOS.com is the incredible variety and diversity of the content on the website. Not only does it boast professional, print-quality photos, high-resolution clipart and HD video, but with an inventory of over five million images the selection offers something for every need and taste.
However, as much as photograph can provide the perfect visual detail to a project, there are times when it’s necessary or just plain fun to play with them a bit. For example you could take that great picture and turn it into a reasonable facsimile of a watercolour. With image editing software this is, of course, quite easy to achieve. While the process might not make the art world sit up and take notice, the results are satisfactory for most purposes and come without the expense of hiring an artist.
I actually undertook this project as a gift for my husband a couple of years ago. When his parents made the decision to sell the family farm he was devastated. Just in his teens he had neither the means nor the maturity to set himself up as a landowner. Even to this day, when we pass by it on our many trips hither and yon, he looks toward the house with slight melancholy.
It dawned on me that while I couldn’t give him the whole package, what a nice gift it would be to bring a little piece of his past into our home. A painting of the house I decided would look perfect over the fireplace in the room he was currently renovating at our place. Unable, however, to find an artist whom I trusted and was affordable, I opted for Plan B. My photographer daughter took the picture and I took on the transformation to watercolour with Photoshop.
Author Seth Godin has said that art is not in the eye of the beholder, but in the soul of the artist. Well the ‘artist’ here has shown a basic understand of Photoshop over the years. Yet, when I set onto the the aforementioned project it was with a desire to learn through experimentation.
And I’m happy to say that the results were good enough, though I hadn’t realized the house and grounds were considerably different than those in his memories. I have since found an artist who can take on the more ambitious alteration required to bring his past to life.
The key point, though, was that it was fun to take an image and see what I could do with it using some expertise and a lot of trial and error.
I enjoyed the project so much I’ve decided to give it one more try here today. The first step, obviously, was to select a photo that would look great as a watercolour. I love this gorgeous shot of autumn in New York’s Central Park (#296795), one of the most popular autumn downloads from iPHOTOS.com.
After opening the image in Photoshop the size can be changed to whatever specific requirements are. My first step then was to brighten the overall picture and intensify the colours just a tad by selecting Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation, and changing the settings to -3 for Hue, 2 for Saturation and 1 for Lightness.
Next I renamed the background layer to original then right clicked and created a duplicate copy.
With this highlighted I chose Filter>Artistic>Dry Brush. The settings used were Brush Size, 3; Brush Detail 2 and Texture 1. Play with these to get the effect you like.
Then change the Blend Mode to Screen.
Highlight the original layer and select Filter>Artistic>Cutout. For this purpose I set the Humber of Levels to 7, the Edge Simplicity, 3 and the Edge Fidelity, 2. Again, however, you will want to play with the setting to get the desired results.
Choose Soft Light for the Blend Mode and you’re done. Here’s my work of art.
