Line Art Watercolor

"Use of the Smart Blur edge only"

You need to download this image to use for this tutorial

1. Open your image up. Right click on he background layer and select duplicate layer.

2. Click Filter=> Blur=> Smart Blur. Smart blur allows us to create line drawings. we can determine the number of lines by setting a threshold, or a value that determines what differences in colors will give us a line. 100% difference is like black and white  so where black and white meet, you will get a line, or blue and orange. The radius will tell the program how far away are you measuring the color differences. On this image we will set the following:

• Set the Mode to Edge Only
• Set the quality to medium
• Set the threshold 30
• Set the Radius to 5

3. The black and white image you just created needs to be inverted. Hold your control key down and hit the letter I (Ctrl i).

4. On the Layers panel, change the mode to Soft Light by clicking the mode box drop down arrow on the right side and scrolling down. this will allow colors to come through the white.

5. The black lines are very stark and makes it look like ink on top of watercolor. To make them look more like colored accent lines, set the opacity of that layer to 75% by clicking on the opacity box and moving the slider.

5. Save your image by clicking File=> save for the web. Select JPG medium.