How to create a watercolor portraits. Photoshop guide.

[Phenomenum]

For those peoples who have access to PS and want a create watercolor for character, but don't know what to do exactly. I desided to make dedicated topic (maybe it should be pinned), becose it's will be easier to find this information, rather than i simply post it in Portraits topic. Also becose i want to provide a detailed step-by-step guide, and this lead to huge size of posts.

 

This technique i'm using long enough, and it was used for my Enhanced Companions Portraits mod: https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/297

 

The time needed to process one portrait may be vary, but usually it takes about 15-25 minutes. If you know what you need to do, of course. So don't be too scary - once you learn the core principes, you will be able to do this very quick.

 

All typical settings for brushes and filters you can see on screenshots, but they a not mandatory and may slightly vary depends of material (dark portrait or light portrait etc.)

 

Let's go... You can open screenshots in original size by mouse click.

 

 

 

 

1. We have a portrait and paper background, provided by Obsidian. Add a new layer and paste the portrait you want to process. All futher processing we must apply to one layer - portrait. Paper background must be untouched.

 

2. Now we need to erase background. You can use online tool, suggested by MaxQuest: https://www.remove.bg/

...or use Eraser tool and remove all background manually. I use big sized brush first.

 

...then use smaller brush to work with tiny details. End result should look like this:

 

3. Change layer style to "Multiply".

 

4. Go to Image > Adjustments > Exposure. The typical settings are on the screenshot, but they highly depends of picture.

Usually i'm using range of 0,5-0,9 for Exposure, and range 1,6-1,8 for Gamma Correction.

General rule: You should see a paper texture well enough and portrait must be not too dark and not too light.

 

5. Then Go to Image > Adjustments > Photo Filter and add Cooling filter to layer to avoid yellowish tint on portrait. General setting are on screenshot, but they may vary depends of portrait color. Usually i'm using range of 15-20.

 

6. Go to Filter Gallery and apply Poster Edges filter. General settings are on screenshot, but feel free to experiment according to your taste.

 

7. Now we need to delete all undesired black lines added by filter. Use History brush with Opacity 50%. Set source for History brush to one level above Poster Edges filter (Photo Filter in our case).

 

On below screenshot you can see left part of the image "cleared". Process whole image.

 

Final result:

 

8. Use hard brush with 2px size and black color (on screenshot you can see wrong settings - Hardness must be set to 100%). You must outline manually all desired edges: face, hair, lips, eyes etc. This would be tricky and time consuming for some portraits, but necessary. You don't need to have a tablet and stylus for this - i'm using mouse with Smoothing mode (set to 50-60%)

 

Final result:

 

9. Merge all layers - portrait and background (it's important).

Then use a soft Overlay brush. First with black color to made some shades darker, second - white color to emphasize highlits. It's optionally, but doing this you add some "volume" and "dimension" to portrait.

 

10. Crop your image and resize to match portrait size to original convos in dialogues. General rule: height must be about 2 heads of your character.

Resize to 90x141 for _convo (for dialogue).

_si portraits used in scripted interactions must be size of 76x96

 

11. That's all. Sharp your portrait a bit.

 

12. Use some referense from Obsidian's watercolours to ensure that your work fits the original game art. Side-by-side comparison is very useful and reveals to you all mistakes (wrong colors, opacity level and so on)

 

Some descriptions may be unclear, becose english is obviously not my native language. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

 

 

Edited March 25, 2019 by Phenomenum

[bringingyouthefuture]

Great topic!  I use a slightly different method.  Will see if I have time this weekend to lay them out!

[Phenomenum]

Great topic!  I use a slightly different method.  Will see if I have time this weekend to lay them out!

 

Thanks. I thought, maybe some peoples will try to make watercolors by self, after that, instead of posting pictures and waiting (sometimes without any luck) for someone's grace

Edited March 22, 2019 by Phenomenum

[asnjas]

The thread with the portrait guide is far less popular than the thread with the requests. Maybe if people put examples of the naked orlans they did with the help if the guide this thread might get a boost.

[MaxQuest]

Was using a somewhat similar workflow

With minor exceptions:

- sometimes used Normal or Overlay instead of Multiply. It was depending on portrait itself. Some are looking better this way. Some that way.

- was usually making the transparent background in Paint.NET (don't laugh) and only after that opening in Photoshop. And there is also: https://www.remove.bg/

- and lastly: exposure and cooling filter is something new to me. Was just playing with transparency.

 

P.S. The biggest trick was to get the right size of the head ^^

[Phenomenum]

Was using a somewhat similar workflow

With minor exceptions:

- sometimes used Normal or Overlay instead of Multiply. It was depending on portrait itself. Some are looking better this way. Some that way.

- was usually making the transparent background in Paint.NET (don't laugh) and only after that opening in Photoshop. And there is also: https://www.remove.bg/

- and lastly: exposure and cooling filter is something new to me. Was just playing with transparency.

 

P.S. The biggest trick was to get the right size of the head ^^

 

Cool stuff about Background remover (still i don't trust anything exept my own hands ), it could be a real time-saver. I will add it to guide, if you don't mind?

[MaxQuest]

^ Sure

 

P.S. Usually online tools are somewhat atrocious in this regard. But with that one, I had like 30% of portraits not needing the extra manual "magic wanding".

 

P.P.S. Although best transparency results are probably achieved using these guides:

- one

- two

Edited March 25, 2019 by MaxQuest

[Boeroer]

That background remover is pretty awesome. Thanks for that!

[bringingyouthefuture]

Okay - wanted to add the way I get the hard black outlines, which originally came from this post here:
 
https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/103065-portraits-iv/page-12 - about halfway down the page.
 
1) Paint out background then I normally save the painted out background as a .PSD document
 

 

2) Change the image to grayscale


 
 
3) Duplicate the layer
 

 

4) On the top layer Invert the color

 

5) Still on top layer change the mode to Linear Dodge

 

 

6) Add a blur, I normally do Gaussian Blurs, so the image will then look like this:

 

 

7) Merge the two layers
 

 

8 ) Use the Filter Gallery feature

 

 

 

9) Choose either Photocopy under the "Sketch" Tab, or Poster Edges under the "Artistic Tab" and you get an image with black lines

 

 

10) Save this image as a PSD document and close
 

 

11) Open your saved PSD document where you removed the background
 

 

12) At this point I normally create 4 layers:
 
a) the color image with background removed
 
b) a duplicate of the color image with background removed
 
c) the outline with the black edges created above
 
d) the paper background of the watercolors
 
They should look something like this:

07_Layers
 

 

After that I play with the modes and opacity of everything but the background layer:

08_Modes
 
 
This was the final image here:


 
For the above image I did the following:
 
a) "Color Image Duplicate" is 85 percent opacity and set to Pin Light for the mode.
 
b) "Color Image" is set to 50 percent opacity and set to Linear Light mode.
 
c) "Outline layer" is set to 45 percent opacity and set to Darker Color mode.
 
Last I have been playing around with merging all the layer at this point and and dropping back in the color image below my new watercolor image.  I then erase the new watercolor image that is above the most colorful sections of the original image to add more color, for the above I did the eyes the lips and the green jewel.  That makes it really pop there . Anyway cheers!
 
 

Edited April 1, 2019 by bringingyouthefuture