Of course you can also create an action to recreate the effect. This water colour effect though, is a very simple one. There are a lot of tutorials online that are much more complicated and have much more steps, with duplicated smart objects and adjustment layers. A big advantage of the smart-object method is, that once you have followed the tutorial, you can recreate the effect by saving it as a psd, instead of recreating it all over and record an action.
that is cool Courtney... an action would work perfectly. I am going to have to give that a go in PS... my making action skills needs a little help Practice practice practice!
Courtney I did an action and it works but I cannot start it off right by running the action to choose a photo.. it has to start with the photo open already.. is that your action too? Otherwise do you have a suggestion as to how to get it to look for a photo to bring it in to PS.. I am good with what I did and will finish my page tomorrow.. had to rest my arm .. hugs and thanks for any insight.. I was thinking maybe with a stop or something but I just got it to work with a photo already open.. I Hope it will be there when I open ps tomorrow lol it was not letting me save the action and lately the new styles I make disappear when I close ps down and then reopen.. glitchy for sure lately!!
I think you would need to write a photoshop script for the open photo portion and link the action to it to get the water color effect, but I may be wrong. https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/07/introduction-to-photoshop-scripting/
I didn't have mine open the photo. Mine starts with making the already opened photo a smart object, then runs the steps. You can see it here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ut8j51kdgc7eujw/Watercolor Action.atn?dl=0 To save it and 'export' it, I had to put it inside a folder, then save it. I made a quick screen cast showing how to save an action below. I couldn't figure out what was wrong until I realized it had to be in a folder. You can't just save a stand alone action. As to the styles thing, I don't know what that is! Have you tried resetting your perefences? That usually fixes any issues I'm having. But - thanks for the reminder to save my styles! I haven't done it in awhile, and it's easier to reload if I've saved them!
Thanks Kayla.. I will skip writing a script.. my days of writing computer code are long over.. lol.. I did computer programming back in 1980.. lol., I will just open the photo lol thank you for looking though! Hugs!
Ah thanks re the saving of the action I did not realize the action needed to be in a folder either I will try that. I started the action to duplicate and get rid of the original photo and then go through all the steps with converting etc. I will try your action too.. Thanks Courtney. I will try and reset the preferences... sometimes it is just a glitch with PS and the Styles/ actions where it will lose everything. Hugs!
@bestcee The folder was it, and my action was still there this morning so thank you so much for your help! I was having a blank yesterday as it has been a real long time since I created an action.. I think I took a course at Tiffany's re actions but don't remember a lot of things as it has been a while. Thanks again for the assistance! PS... I tested your action and it works perfectly, Courtney.. thanks.. I think the PSE people will love it! I redid mine as well and was able to save it. Thanks again for the assistance with saving the action that "folder" was the key
@cfile yay! I forgot at first too, then when I tried on a different one I realized it was the folder I was missing.
Here's me looking sceptic LOL I have an old PSE (PSE11). I've never heard of "smart object", maybe it's a newer thing? Photo is improved, but I'm not sure I see the same effect, but almost. Will try and see if the action works now.
Ok, tried the action. I got a couple of error messages on the way but it did give me this: Having an old program makes you have to tweek things a bit, but I think the image of Mårten ended up ok. Now I have to make a layout to really see how I like it. Thanks for all inspiration - this is so nice!
Great job @tanteva it is great to learn new things, isn't it? I love that Aly @ajm gave us the inspiration and was sharing with us
I'm going to print out your instructions and practice more but for now, this is a nightmare. A bad dream. A what the actual what. Kind of fun?