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A Watercolor action is available in the Actions download. A single effect, Smart Blur (Filter > Blur > Smart Blur), is used to advantage to produce a watercolor image. Smart Blur is similar to the standard Gaussian Blur, but allows more control. In addition to Radius you can specify Threshold to control the extent of blur based on pixel values. Resize the image before converting to a watercolor. Principle layers, and their effect on the final image, are shown below.
Pen/Pen Contrast. The black and white Pen layer defines outlines in the image. Adjust opacity of the Pen Contrast layer to control Pen density.
Color Saturation/Color Levels. Adjust saturation and brightness of the colored Paint layer.
Paint. A sharpened version of the original image.
Canvas. A background canvas that shows through lighter colored areas of the image.
Adjust Smart Blur for the Pen layer to control the pen outline. Experiment with Radius and Threshold to control Pen strokes. Use low Radius values for low-resolution images targeting the internet, and high values for high-resolution images targeting a printer. Lower the Threshold to include more pixels in the outline and give the effect of more pen strokes. Raise the Threshold to include fewer pixels in the outline and give the effect of fewer pen strokes.
Adjust Smart Blur for the Paint layer to control the amount of detail in the solid watercolor areas. Start with the same settings you use for the Pen, then adjust Threshold accordingly. While making adjustments in that miniscule window in the Smart Blur dialog box, remember you can click on the plus/minus keys to zoom.
For more realism, add a Sandstone (Filter > Texturizer > Texture > Sandstone) effect. For the effect to apply evenly to the entire image, flatten the image, then apply the effect. Set Relief to a low value so the texture doesn't overwhelm the image and light from the top. Scaling will depend on the intended target. For high-resolution images a high Scaling value is required. Images intended for the internet can use a lower value.
To construct the Pen layer modify the original image using Smart Blur (mode = Edge Only). This setting produces a high-contrast black and white image with edges outlined in white. Invert the result to produce black outlines, or pen strokes.
To construct the Paint layer modify the original image with Smart Blur (mode = Normal). This blurs the image and gives the effect of a watercolor painting.
Both Pen and Paint layers are contained in a Paint Set so that any adjustments to Color Saturation or Color Levels will affect the Paint layer, and not the underlying Canvas. The Paint Set uses a Darken blend mode. Any pixels in the Paint Set lighter than the canvas assume the tones of the canvas. Consequently, dark areas in the image remain unaffected, while light or white areas resemble a canvas.
