Tutorial: Watercolor, Mal Firth's method

[Mal Firth]

Last weekend I went to stay with friends and on the Sunday morning we went for a stroll down by the canal, which is an overnight mooring spot for holiday barges. Here is one of several pictures I took - please feel free to play.

[Mal Firth]

Here's my attempt at a watercolour

Duplicate the original layer (called it mono)
Desaturate the mono layer
Duplicate the mono layer
Invert the mono copy layer
Set the Blend Mode on the mono copy layer to Color Dodge
Use Filter Gaussian Blur on the mono copy layer to taste (I used 12.5)
Switch off the original layer
Merge the two visible layers
On the Merged layer set the Opacity to 60% to bring up some colour
Switch back on the original layer
On the original layer increase Saturation to taste
Use Gaussian Blur on the original layer to about 4.0
Make a blank layer filled with white and set opacity temporarily to 50%
Use the Lassoo tool (with feather set to 25 pixels) to draw an irregular shape around the barge
Press the delete key and reset opacity to 100% to create a vignette

[breeze]

Fabulous effect, really like it Mal and a big thank you for the tut on it. I'm a fan of your work and have one of your actions that I use a lot. Look forward to seeing more of your effects.

[Cheryl H]

The directions were excellent and so were the results.

[e.b.west]

Tried my old standby:

Dup BG layer three times

Use waterpaper filter on luminosity
cutout - soft light
smudge stick - soft light
flatten
create a new layer, fill with with and erase to taste.

E.B.

[DannyRaphael]

Hey Mal...

Finally getting caught up.

Here's an application on a picture from New York's Times Square. On the top sketch (mono) layer, I set the blend mode to Color Dodge.

This method has a lot of possibilities. Well done. Thanks for sharing your technique.

~Danny~

[Mal Firth]

Hi Danny, that looks pretty good. Here's a little extra wrinkle I just tried. I merged all the layers from the procedure I detailed above then made a duplicate layer. I ran the Artistic>Watercolor filter on the new layer and set the mode to Difference. Then I ran the watercolor filter a second time and lightend it a little in Levels. Here's the result - looks as if they're about to enter a cave