How to turn casual photos into artistic watercolor masterpieces in Photoshop

As the title says, this tutorial will help you change your casual family photos and stock images into really cool watercolor designs, which you can use them as cover for albums, Facebook timeline covers, for a creative wedding invitation… you name it!
If you’re familiar with drawing simple shapes with the Path Tool or using brushes at a basic level, this tutorial will feel like a walk in the park. It’s not nearly as hard as it looks, just pay a bit of attention to some details.

Difficulty: Beginner, Intermediate
Completion time: 2 hours
Tools: Photoshop CS3

Resources:

• Floral Brushes Pack 29 by Designious
• Stock image by varyamo
• vintage paper texture by DesignTNT
• watercolor texture by DesignTNT

Final Image Preview

Pretty cool, huh? Let’s see how it’s done!

First, start with the composition idea: we’re going to create a watercolor-ish composition with a girl wearing a hat. This means we’ll need to adjust the pose a bit to be in a relaxed state, preferably laid back.
The current position (slightly bent over in front) suggests implication and a desire to act. A simple solution to this matter is to just tilt the image to the left.

STEP 1
Go to File > Open (CTRL+O), select the image and hit OK. Hit CTRL+J to duplicate the layer.

STEP 2
Go to Edit > Free Transform (CTRL+T), rotate the image and hit Enter.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this content.

STEP 32

Add a paper texture in the background, just like you did with the watercolor texture.
Now select the top-most layer and go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map, Brightness/Contrast and Hue/Saturation.

STEP 33
With the Hue/Saturation layer selected, hit CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E, then go to Filter > Other > High Pass. Set it to 1 px, hit OK and set the layer Blending mode to Overlay.

Done!