Turn a photo into a watercolour work of art in minutes
Start by choosing Filter>Artistic>Paint Daubs. Use a Brush Size of 8, Sharpness of 38 and ensure the Brush Type is set to Simple. Name this layer Paint Daubs. This gives our base image some texture to kick things off.
Make your Foreground colour a pale yellow and Background colour white. Now, using the Gradient tool (G), draw a line from the top left to the bottom right on a new layer (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+N). Set the blend mode to Overlay.
Duplicate the Paint Daubs layer (Ctrl/right-click and the Duplicate Layer). Hit Filter>Artistic>Watercolour. Set Brush Detail to 14, Shadow Intensity to 0 and Texture to 1. Change the layer’s blend mode to Overlay and Opacity to 70%.
Now duplicate the watercolour layer and change the new layer’s blend mode to Hue. Head to Filter>Gaussian Blur and move the slider to 40.1, giving a nice paint bleed to authenticate the overall effect, and you’re done.