This shot didnt turn out good but I like the composition so turned it into a WC

Beautiful watercolor effect! You must share your technique. I like the rough edges and the different saturation levels. Nicely done!

~T

Schwartzie,

Absolutely beautiful. Care to share the steps? I love everything from the brush strokes to the texture. Very, very nice.

Danny has my technique marked as Sarah's watercolors in his tutorial list.

To go directly to Sarah's watercolor technique click here (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4483)

~T

Sarah - That is really stunning! Thanks so much for sharing it with us! :D

Jeanie

Schwartzie
Thats a Beauty..Thanks for sharing your steps..I've been trying to follow it as a tutorial with one of my bird pic's..Is the texture on your bluejay pic. from photoshop (like sandstone with a fade) or is it a commercial purchase..

Thanks
Jerry

I didnt add the texture instructions in the tutorial as I usually dont use it. In this case it was add a duplicate layer of the finished flattened image, edit, fill, 50grey, add layer mask, filter add texture and overlay

This is so different than the tutorial example. Very nice, truly a painting look.

http://www.pbase.com/platscha/retouch.jpeg


I tried this technique, don't know if it is really right or not.
Some questions, did flatten, dup then filled with white, layer mask, I used the loaded wet water color flat, may have been the wrong brush ?
Then had to go to orig bg layer to select and do median?
Suggestions ? ?

Platscha, very nice job on the dog painting...looks like one of Sarah's.

And Sarah, that jay pic is utterly gorrrrrgeous and went right into my "keeper" file! What brush did you use that made those irregular edges on the background...that is really effective in giving it a real brushed look. Do you recall?

Phyllis

Platcha that looks pretty good.

I used the wet watercolor brush and played around with the settings and saved one I liked. I use varias (forgot how to spell that) sizes and sometimes different brush settings. It is all very intuitive. I think because I have a background in watercolor painting it helps in trying to get it close to a real one.

I keep my original background safe. Then make a new layer from the last one everytime I apply a different filter. I may end up with quite a few filter layers set to different opacity and mode.

What I find very hard is figuring what size to work on for using in a printed piece. The size makes a big difference in the look of the printed finish. I usually work smaller and upsample. If anyone has any hints on this end of things I would love to hear them

schwartzie

your work is lovely.

when you speak of watercolor brushes, what do they look like? unless i am overlooking something, ps5.5 does not have this specifically, but i am guessing i could approximate by clicking wet edges if i knew shape, hardness and density of the brush.

you have opened my eyes to the uses of smart blur; had never used it beyond making line drawings with it, thank you so much.

I used photoshop7. It has more brush controls but I think you might find something fairly similar in 5.5