Preparation steps are essential, because if you lose precious detail at this stage, you can never get it back. Decrease that to 20/25% for open areas, and increase it when you want to assure visible detail, such as in the very delicate wedding dress.įigure 2. On faces, use a brush setting of 50% Opacity and 50% Flow. Choose High quality and Normal mode.Ĭreate a layer mask and paint detail back into the image with the softest black brush, touched loosely over any details to be selectively preserved (Figure 2).

Settings of 80/90 will be too sharp overall and 15/20 too blurry for faces. Go to Filter> Blur> Smart Blur and enter settings that range from about 50 radius and 55 threshold to 40 radius and 60 threshold. To see a larger version, click on the image.ĭuplicate the image, and name the new layer “Blur.” This image, with its lush color and iconic meaning reminiscent of Norman Rockwell, makes for a perfect story board scene for a video. For larger versions of all figures, click on the images.įigure 1. Most images will be far simpler and less time-consuming to execute. I chose a densely populated action wedding scene (Figure 1) to demonstrate how you can achieve very fine detail. You’ll need Adobe Photoshop, preferably CS2 a stylus and tablet and a full-resolution 8-bit image that has been color corrected, cropped, and manipulated for photographic accuracy.

While my technique is far from automated, it requires no color mixing, no custom brushes, and once you get the feel of making strokes, it’s almost as simple as a paint by number.

You don’t have to be a celebrity to achieve these effects - just follow my recipe for hand-painting delightful imagery directly in Photoshop. Celebrity interior designer Candice Olson fades her precision architectural renderings into finished interiors with the new furniture, lighting, and accessories all magically in place. The inspiration for my watercolor-conversion technique, which my company uses for standalone wall art and as storyboard introductory material in our event videos, comes from two intriguing personalities: Karl Lagerfled’s hand-colored fashion sketches for the House of Chanel metamorphose on the screen into breathing models, glamorously enfolded in texture and shimmering fabric. It’s sleek, dramatic, minimalist, and imaginative. My favorite watercolor media is the fine pen-and-ink drawing, loosely stroked with brushes full of color that layer life and light and shadow, yet leave an abstract feel with plenty of unpainted white space. The secret to watercolor conversion that doesn’t scream “Digital!” is to use brush strokes that mirror the motions of an artist’s hand. Digital filters and plug-ins net only fair results when rendering the subtleties, depth, and complexities of watercolor.

Fabric edge photoshop brush