This tutorial contains thumbnails of the example images. If you want to see exactly what a particular step does, click on the thumbnail to pull up a full size image in a separate window. Close the window to return to this tutorial.

Read the instructions and mouseover the images for notes about them.

Choose a photo that has bright colours. It works better on a Jpeg image but if it is a GIF, it still works, just increase the colours to 16 million (Colors>Increase Color Depth>16 Million Colors.)

1. Open your image in PSP 7.

2. If necessary, increase the colours in the image to 16 million by going to Colors>Increase Color Depth>16 million Colors. (This may be greyed out which means that your pic already has 16 million colours!). This doesn't mean that your image literally has 16 million colours but it means that this number of colours are made available for you to use.

3. Duplicate your image once (Window>Duplicate) so that you have two copies open.

4. Go to the first copy of your image. This is going to be the main window in which we will create the watercolour. First, decrease the colour depth to 2 colours (Colors>Decrease Color Depth>2 Colors.) In the popup dialogue, check the box marked "Grey Values", choose Error Diffusion as the Reduction method, using the Floyd-Steinberg technique, and check Weighted under the Palette Weight heading (see image below).

Your image will decrease to black and white and assume a very speckled look.

5. Now immediately increase your colours back to 16 miliion, (Colors>Increase Color Depth>16 Million Colors).

6. Now for the watercolour look...
Go to Effects>Noise>Edge Preserving Smooth. Set the amount of Smoothing to 30. This will give you a blotchy grey and white image. Repeat the process twice more, (Edit>Repeat Edge Preserving Smooth) for a total of three applications.

7. To get rid of the little speckles that appear after this effect, use the Median Filter, (Effects>Noise>Median Filter). Set the Filter Aperture to 5, which should remove all speckles.

8. Now we bring back the colour. Go to your second copy of the image - the untouched one. Copy the image, (Edit>Copy). Now return to the grey one, and paste the color image on it as a new layer, (Edit>Paste>As New Layer). Your image will now look as it originally did.

9. Now reduce the visibility of that layer to about 35, (Layers>Properties...set the Opacity level to 35). See image below...

10. Now we need to merge the layers into one layer, (Layers>Merge>Merge All (Flatten)). Below is what the image now looks like...

11. Now is the time to lighten or darken your image depending on your preferences. We can also brighten the colours (Saturation) at the same time.

Go to Colors>Adjust>Hue/Saturation/Lightness... I set the Saturation of my image to 22 and the Lightness to 10, see below...

Below shows what the image now looks like...

12. To add a paper-like texture to the image and mute the colour slightly, start by creating a new layer, (layers>New Raster Layer). Leave the dialogue box with the default settings - see below...

Use the Flood Fill Tool to fill this layer with a neutral grey colour (I used #C0C0C0). Then, to add a texture go to Effects> Texture Effects> Texture...
Choose Gravel from the drop down menu, see the top of the image below...

The above dialogue box also allows you to choose from a variety of other textures. Just click on the bar on the left of the little texture square (Under 'Texture'). You may prefer to use a different texture to the one I used.

13. Now we have to reduce the visibilty of this layer. Go to Layers>Properties and set the Opacity to 25. We did something like this in step 9.

14. Now merge the layer again (Layers>Merge>Merge All).

15. I found that I needed to darken my image a little and increase the saturation again to make the colours brighter, (Colors>Adjust>Hue/Saturation/Lightness).
I changed the Saturation to 6 and the lightness to -18 , see below...

The final result of the image is below. Click on it to see the full size version!

You may want to add a frame to your image (Image>Picture Frames...), or print your image and frame it properly! I recommend using photo paper.

If you want to see other images I have done this way click here.