Not confident with your drawing skills? Need to create an Interior Design visualisation? Well you’ve come to the right place!
I learned this awesome technique at uni and now I want to share it with you guys!
This is the sort of thing you can expect to create from this tutorial:
Looks a bit daunting? Don’t worry, heres a simple step by step guide of what to do:
1.Select an image (make sure it is high quality)
I found this image on housetohome.com and chose it because of the mixture of tones and textures. (I am merely using this as an example, if you are going to use your image, get permission from the source!!)
(Credit: House to Home)
2.Open the image in Photoshop
(This is the easy bit)
3.Create a copy of the Background Layer
Make sure you have the layers tab selected first.
Then, right click on the background layer in the layers tab and select ‘Duplicate Layer’ from the drop down list. You should then get a new layer named ‘Background Copy’.
4.Convert into a line drawing
Now, make sure you have the ‘Background Copy’ layer selected (<- that’s very important!) Click on Filter → Stylize → Find Edges.
You should end up with a trippy looking image like this:
5.Convert to Black & White:
To do this, select Image → Adjustments → Black & White.
Now you can play around with the colour levers. You are aiming for good black & white contrast and to get rid of some of the ‘noise’.
This can be further enhanced by the ‘Curves’ tool. This can be found under Image → Adjustments → Curves.
6.Add a ‘Mask layer’ to the ‘Background Copy’ layer
Click the ‘Mask’ button in the bottom right corner (circled in red) which will add a what looks like a white box next to the layer, this is the mask.
7.Set up the Brush tool
Make sure the Mask is selected, then select the brush tool from the vertical toolbar on the left side of the screen.
Next, I changed the brush size to 50px and changed the type to ‘Dry Brush’.
8.Use the Brush Tool
Switch the colour swatch to Black and change the opacity of the brush to 10%.
Now you can use the brush tool to slowly add some of the colour back into the image. This is a gradual process, but you can speed it up by slightly increasing the opacity. You don’t need to bring all the colour back, ideally, you are aiming for something like this:
9.Add a white ‘Colour Fill Layer’
Click the circle that is half black half white in the bottom right of your screen, then select ‘Solid Colour’ from the drop down menu.
Change the colour to white in the ‘Colour Picker (Solid Colour) pop up.
10.Finally, use the brush tool again
You’ll notice that the colour fill layer comes with a mask layer. Like the previous step, select the colour fill mask and use the brush tool again to remove some of the white area.
Final Outcome
You should end up with an image with a watercolour effect like this:
Here’s a look at the two images you can create with this tutorial (the first is without steps 9 &10)
Phew! I hope you have enjoyed this blog post and are inspired to try this technique.
Pin this post? Use the graphic below!
Eve x
Wow, this is very cool! Thanks for sharing this, I will try this out soon!
Thank you! Great! Let me know how you get on x