This effect was generated in Filter Forge, a Photoshop plugin that allows you to create your own filters.
Give your images the look of artistic watercolours! This filter gives you almost total control over colour, bleed, tone, paper texture, and sketch accuracy.
NOTES:
Colour Smoothness: This controls the range of colours available to create your image. At lower values the filter uses only a few colours, and at higher values it uses more. Low values can produce interesting effects, but may also be unpredictable.
Glazing Amount: Controls the strength of colour overlap at colour edges.
UPDATE 2: This is a second update, mostly adjusted for speed. I've compressed what I can without, I hope, sacrificing the look and feel of the original – the filter should now update much more quickly than in the first two versions. I have also added "Sketch Offset," to give you more sketch options, and reordered and renamed some of the controls for better clarity.
Have fun! =^_
scarykitty paint painting artistic watercolour painterly sketch glaze glazing
This filter has earned its author one of our rewards. They are given to the authors of popular filters and include a free copy of Filter Forge.