Sometimes you do your best to take a beautiful photograph, and end upwith something that you wouldn't even hang up in your garage. Well, a littlebit of digital manipulation can hide a world of sin, and turn your photointo something you can be proud of.  This tutorial shows you how tomake a photo emulate a watercolor painting. Yes, PSP 7 does have a filtercalled Brush Strokes, with a preset called Watercolor, but I think thistechnique gives a much better result.

Now this technique is best demonstrated on a large image (though itwill work on a small one), so I've done something here that I've neverdone before. This tutorial page contains only thumbnails of the exampleimages, scaled down to 30%. If you want to see exactly what a particularstep does, simply click on a thumbnail to pull up a full size image ina separate window. Simply close the window to return to the tutorial.

Start with an image that looks like it would make a good watercolorpainting. JPG's work best, but you can start with a GIF if you increasethe colors to 16 million before you start (Colors > Increase Color Depth> 16 Million Colors.) The first step is to duplicate your image once (Window> Duplicate) so that you have two copies open. Actually, it's probablya good idea to duplicate the image twice, and then close your originalstarting image. That way you won't accidentally overwrite it. Here I'veused an image that I got from ArtToday.

Go to the first copy of your image. This is going to be the main windowin which we will create the watercolor. First, decrease the color depthto 2 colors (Colors > Decrease Color Depth > 2 Colors.) In the popup dialogue,check the box marked "Grey Values", choose Error Diffusion as the Reductionmethod, using the Floyd-Steinberg technique, and check Weighted under thePalette Weight heading. Your image will decrease to black and white, andassume a very speckled look. At this point you should immediately increaseyour colors back to 16 million. (Colors > Increase Color Depth > 16 MillionColors.)
 
 

For those of you who don't want to wait for the large images to open,here is a close-up of the image after color reduction. If this isn't whatyour image looks like, go back and make sure that you chose the right settings.
 
 

Here's where we get most of the watercolor look from. Go to Effects> Noise > Edge Preserving Smooth. Set the Amount of Smoothing all the wayup to 30. This will give you a blotchy gray and white image. Repeat theprocess twice more (Edit > Repeat Edge preserving Smooth), for a totalof three applications.
 
 

The one problem with the edge Preserving Smooth filter is that it leaveslittle speckles in various places. To remove these, we use the Median Filter(Effects > Noise > Median Filter.) Set the Filter Aperture to 5. This shouldremove all of the obvious speckles.

Here's where we bring back the color. Go to your second copy of theimage, the untouched one. Copy the image (Edit > Copy.) Now return to thegray one, and paste the color image in as a new Layer (Edit > Paste > AsNew Layer.) Your image should now look as it originally did. Now we changethe Layer properties. Go to Layers > Properties. In the Layer Propertiesdialogue set the Blend Mode to Color.

Now we go back to that second window again. This time we're going tomake a few changes to it. First, duplicate the background Layer (Layers> Duplicate.) Open up the Layer properties dialogue for this new layer(Layers > Properties) and set the Blend Mode to Difference. Your imageshould turn completely black. Don't worry, it's just temporary. Now goto Effects > Edge > Dilate. Perform this process three times total. Youshould get some nice light colored outlines on a black background.

Light outlines on a black background won't help us much, so first mergeyour two layers (Layers > Merge All), and then invert the colors of yourimage (Colors > Negative Image.) Copy this image (Edit > Copy) and moveon to the next step.

Return to your main window and paste the copied image as a new layer(Edit > Paste > As New Layer.) Set the Blend Mode of this new Layer toBurn in the Layer Properties dialogue (Layers > Properties.)  Thisshould outline various parts of your imagebringing back some of the detail. Leave the Properties box open after changing the Blend Mode.
 
 

Click on the Blend Ranges tab of the Layer Properties dialogue. On thecontrol marked This Layer, slide the top right slider all the way overto the left (see below.) The Blend Channel should be Grey.

Adjusting the Blend Range should reduce the effect of the lighter outlines,while leaving the darker outlines unchanged.
 
 

At this point you need to decide if your image is too dark, too light,or exactly right. This will really depend on your original photograph.When the image is too light, there may be some patches of white where thereshould  be color.  If it's too dark, the overall picture willlook murky. In either case, click on your bottom layer in the Layer palette,and then adjust the Lightness (Colors > Adjust Hue/Saturation/Lightness)Here I found the image to be too dark for a boat out on a lake, so I increasedthe Lightness by 20. Using the Proof buttons in the dialogue box (the littleeye and arrow icons) can help you get the color just right
 
 

The top outline layer that we added usually replaces some details lostin the edge preserving smoothing process. But it also sometimes adds someannoying artifacts where you don't want them (see the ugly dark boxy detailsshown below.) There are a couple of ways of dealing with that.

Start by selecting the top layer in the Layer palette. At this pointyou can just erase the details with the erase tool (the simplest solution.)I fixed the problem by applying  the Median filter (Effects > Noise> Median filter) with an aperture of 5,  the same as was used earlier.
 
 

To add the paper-like texture to the image, and mute the color slightly,start by creating a new layer above all the rest (click on the top layerin the Layer palette, and then go to Layers > New. Click okay to acceptall the defaults.) Use your Flood Fill tool to fill this layer with a neutralgray color (RGB 192/192/192.) Next, go to Effects > Texture Effects > Texture.Choose the Gravel preset from the dropdown menu.

Now just adjust the Layer Opacity to bring out your image (Layers >Properties.) An Opacity setting of about 30 works well.

If you want your colors a bit brighter, finish by merging your layers(Layers > Merge All) and adjusting the saturation up a bit (Colors > Adjust> Hue/Saturation/Lightness.) Here I used a saturation setting of 12.
 
 

Add a Picture Frame or print your image (I recommend photo paper) andyou're done.