Learn how to create a professional Photoshop watercolor effect that you can change quickly depending on the image you are using. This effect is really versatile and uses a non-destructive workflow. I’m using Photoshop to create this effect and you can get it from Adobe here.
Step One: Create a solid color background
We want to create a solid color background for our watercolor effect to be placed on. This way we can easily change it later. Go into the Layers Panel, at the bottom you will see the Create New Adjustment Layer icon. Tap this icon and select Solid Color. This will create a new solid color which you can change by double-clicking into its thumbnail. For now, we will leave it as pure white.
Step Two: Get watercolor brushes
We will need to get some watercolor brushes to paint with, luckily these are free from Adobe and are excellent. I have an in-depth tutorial on how to Get more brushes for Photoshop that you can check out here. But for now, all your need to do is go Window > Brushes then in that Brushes panel you will see a burger menu in the top right. Click that and select Get More Brushes. This will take us to Adobe websites.
You will see a wide range of brush packs that you can download for free, they are excellent and I highly recommend playing with them all! But for now, just download the Watercolor pack. It will download an *.ABR file. If you double click this file it will automatically install the brushes into your brush panel in a folder called Watercolor.
Step Three: Organize watercolor brushes
As you scroll through these watercolor brushes, test them out by painting a little with each one. You will notice that each brush gives you a different effect. What we want to do at this stage is to organize the brushes into just a few that we will use for this project. Otherwise, it will become overwhelming in the amount of choice that we have. Or we will use a brush that is great, but then forget its name and have difficulty locating it again for future use.
In the Brushes panel make a new folder by clicking on the Folder Icon. Call it Watercolors. We can drag any brushes we like into this new folder, this way we can organize them into the brushes we will use for this project. Below you can see the brushes I have picked out and placed into my folder. I will list them here also.
Watercolor Brushes Used:
- Kyle’s Real Watercolor – 500 Giant
- Kyle’s Real Watercolor – Spatter
- Kyle’s Real Watercolor – Beast
- Kyle’s Real Watercolor – 175 Broad Washer Rough
- Kyle’s Real Watercolor – Big Softy
- Kyle’s Real Watercolor – 80 Rough
- Kyle’s Real Watercolor – Alcohol
- Kyle’s Real Watercolor – Big Rough Wash Small Grain
- Kyle’s Real Watercolor – Biggie
- Kyle’s Real Watercolor – Big Wet Wash Bleed 2
- Kyle’s Real Watercolor – Bristle Bonus
- Kyle’s Real Watercolor – Big Wash
- Kyle’s Real Watercolor – Soft Edge Irregular Wash
- Kyle’s Real Watercolor – Massive Random
- Kyle’s Real Watercolor – Soft Irregular Wash
We will be using these brushes to paint an alpha channel that we can use to affect our photos later on. It’s good to have a broad selection and with the brushes I have chosen here, we get large washes of texture, bristle strokes, spatters, and soft edges. All of these should be perfect to get us the effect we need.
Step Four: Paint a watercolor alpha channel
Set the foreground color to Black. We want this painting to just be black and white as we will make a selection of it, later on, to add into an Alpha channel.
For each brush used I made a new layer – this way I could keep an element of control in that, I can turn on and off each set of brush strokes, or resize and rotate them. We are looking to create a dark central mass with layers of lighter greys and splatters around the edge. So later on we will see our photo clearly in the center but it will fade out a little towards the edges.
I used the 500 Giant brush to lay down a large amount of watercolor. We want to add layers of watercolor texture to this.
I made a new layer in the Layer Panel. Then using the Soft Edge Irregular Wash – I turned the Opacity down to 60% and added in a few patches of layers.
Using the Beast brush with Opacity set to 17% I subtly built-up layers of texture.
Big Rough Wash Small Grain – Set the opacity down to 10% and tap in a layer of texture. Make a new layer in the Layers Panel and then increase the texture to 30%, tap in some texture on to your canvas. Now make another new layer in the Layers Panel and increase the opacity to 100% – concentrate your efforts towards the center to build up a darker tone.
Soft Irregular Wash – Set the flow down to 25%, concentrate in the center. play with the brush size to build up the darkness in several spots.
Big Wash – Make sure to make a new layer in the Layer Panel, make the brush size smaller, we want to concentrate the brush now into making some of the areas close to black.
Spatter Brush – Make the brush size really big and then start dapping spatter down, make the brush size smaller, and do the same. This will give us variations in texture.
Alcohol Brush – dab this brush in various areas around the edges, play with the size of the brush to add variations in texture.
Step Five: Make the Watercolor Alpha Channel.
Select all of your watercolor layers and then press CTRL-G to group them. Select this group and press CTRL-J to duplicate that group. then press CTRL-E to merge that entire group together. so now we have a group with your layers in – for now we can turn this group off. And we have a flattened watercolor image similar to the one above.
Underneath this flattened image creates a new layer and fill it with white. Change the foreground color to white and press G on the keyboard to select the Fill tool and click once to fill your background white. Now select both this white layer and your flattened watercolor image and CTRL-E to merge them together. Rename the layer to Mask.
Step Six: Smart Object setup
Make a new layer, fill it with black and then right-click it and select ‘Convert to Smart Object’ – this is where we will eventually place our photograph.
Click the mask icon at the bottom of the Layers Panel.
CTRL-click the layer you named Mask to select it and then press CTRL-C to copy it.
Click back onto your Smart Object layer, go to Window > Channels to open the channels panel. You will see the white mask underneath the color channels, click on this white mask and CTRL-V to paste your selection in. with the selection still active CTRL-T to transform your watercolor mask so that it fills the frame more.
It should look something like below.
Select the Smart Object Layer – then click into its mask and press CTRL-I to invert the mask. So the watercolor part should look white, and the outer background of the mask should look black.
Step Seven: Add an image
Duplicate your Smart Object by selecting it and pressing CTRL-J.
Double click the black thumbnail of your smart object – this will open a new PSD. What we want to do is drag in a photograph, I will be using this one from Pexels. Once you have placed it, re-size the image with CTRL-T so that it fills the frame. Press CTRL-S to save the PSD.
Back in your main Photoshop document, you will see that your photograph now appears here.
Step Eight: Liquify
With your Smart Object that now appears as a photo selected, go to the top of Photoshop, go to Filter > Liquify. We want to stretch out the photo in a horizontal way like you see below. Once you have it stretched out, hit OK.
We are now going to use Gaussian Blur to really blur this stretched image. Go to Filter > Gaussian Blur and set the blur to 140. It’s a massive amount of blur that will give us the hint of the colors of the photo – this is part of our watercolor texture.
Step Nine: Add Filters for Watercolor Effect
Duplicate your Smart Object layer. Then where it is says Smart Filters under the layer – drag these to the Bin icon. We will be adding different filters to this layer.
The first filter we will be adding is Cut Out.
Select the Smart Object Layer and then at the top of Photoshop go to Filter > Filter Gallery.
From the drop-down select Watercolor. Set the brush detail to 3, Intensity to 0, Texture to 1. Hit OK.
Then go back into the filter Gallery to add another filter. This time choose Cutout. Set the Number of Levels to 8, Simplicity to 4, Fidelity to 2. Feel free to play around with these numbers a little to see what other looks you can get.
Finally, add a Gaussian blur filter with a radius of 2px.
You can re-order these Filters by dragging them around underneath your layer. I have the Gaussian Blur at the bottom of the filter stack, then Watercolor and Cutout are at the top. Have a play with how you order Watercolor and Cutout – see whether you prefer one on top vs the other.
Step Ten: Add line textures
I want you to experiment with these filters that we are using, depending on the photo could mean that these filters should change the value to better suit the look we are going for.
For this next filter, I want you to duplicate the Smart Object layer, delete the smart filters on this duplicate and rename it Lines. Then go Filter > Filter Gallery and set the Filter to Photocopy, with the detail value as 8 and Darkness value as 8. Again depending on the image you are using will depend on whether you want to change these values. You are the designer here so whatever looks right to you – go for it.
Set this layer Blend mode to Overlay and its Opacity to 45%.
Step Eleven: Color Lookup
This is the last layer we need. Go to the Adjustments icon at the bottom of the Layers Panel and click Color Lookup. In the Properties panel where it says 3DLUT File – set this to 3Strip.look
This will add a little to the overall color of our effect.
To change the image of our effect all you have to do is double click on the thumbnail of your Smart Object, which will open a new PSD. Drag in a new photo, CTRL-S to save it, and then go back to your original PSD – you now have a Watercolor Effect in Photoshop that is really easy to change and you can use in all sorts of different ways.
