Photoshop How-To: Go from Snapshot to Watercolor

Sure, Illustrator CS2 has new Live Trace and Live Paint features for converting photos into fine art. But who needs new software when Photoshop CS can transform photos with spectacular results?
Written by Gregory Georges on June 8, 2005

Related Reading

This story is taken from "50 Fast Photoshop CS Techniques."

To buy this book click here.

Whether you're trying to disguise a ho-hum digital photo or explore your fine-art side, this technique for turning a photo into a watercolor or a pen-and-ink sketch is sure to satisfy.

The clearly defined steps and abundant screenshots make it easy to follow along. You can choose to mimic a watercolor, a pen-and-ink sketch, or combine the two into a pen and ink with a watercolor wash.

We've posted this excerpt as a PDF file. Just click the link "Transform Photos" to open the PDF file in your Web browser. You can also download the PDF to your machine for later viewing.

To open the PDF, you'll need a full version of Adobe Acrobat (5 or higher) or the Adobe Reader, which you can download here:

.

To learn how to configure your browser for viewing PDF files, see the Adobe Reader tech support page.

Excerpted from "50 Fast Photoshop CS Techniques" by Gregory Georges. Copyright © 2004 Wiley Publishing. All rights reserved. Reproduced here by permission of the publisher.

1

source file?

It would be nice to make the source image available to be able to compare my results to the author's (to know I'm doing it correctly).

2

Outstanding

I already have CS2 -- but this is so good, I'm going to buy this book.

3

Quality not good enough

I am a graphic artist first, but also a fine artist, and I just don't think the final result is good enough. I don't see this as a big breakthrough. It's not horrible, but it's weak.

Post a Comment

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <p> <div> <br> <center> <img> <h2>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Use <!--pagebreak--> to create page breaks.

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Image CAPTCHA
Copy the characters (respecting upper/lower case) from the image.