Easily Create a Watercolor Image WITH FREE ACTION and Duotone Bonus!

Easily Create a Watercolor Image WITH FREE ACTION and Duotone Bonus!

Easily create a watercolor image and duotone. Sometimes we just need to have a little fun, so I created this watercolor image, but these actions can be useful too. The first is a painting or watercolor image, and the second is a duotone image. I will create actions for both effects and they are available below. Unzip the action and just double left click on the .atn file. That should load the actions in Photoshop.

The watercolor image is more complex and uses a smart object to create smart filters. Smart filter are great because the are non-destructive and can be edited anytime, or turned off. This allow you great flexibility of the image. I also included how to add watercolor texture to the image. I didn’t add this to action because I like to use a series of different papers. You can always add this to the action. Lastly, I will show you how to add watercolor effects with free downloadable watercolor brushes.

Feel free to alter some of the smart filters in this watercolor image action. Sometimes I like to remove the watercolor and find edges smart filters by turning the eye off.

What are Photoshop Actions?

Photoshop actions are pre-recorded sets of actions and adjustments that can be applied to an image or a series of images in Adobe Photoshop. They are essentially a way to automate repetitive tasks or apply specific effects to your photos or design projects, saving you time and effort.

Here’s how Photoshop actions work:

1. Recording: You start by recording a series of steps or actions in Photoshop. These actions can include basic adjustments like cropping, resizing, and color correction, or they can be more complex, involving multiple layers and filters.
2. Saving: Once you’ve recorded the actions, you can save them as an action set, which is essentially a collection of related actions.
3. Playback: You can then use these recorded actions on other images by simply loading the action set and running the specific action you want. Photoshop will automatically apply all the recorded steps to the selected image.

Some common uses for Photoshop actions include:

• Batch processing: Applying the same set of edits or adjustments to multiple images, which is particularly useful for photographers who need to process large numbers of photos.
• Creating special effects: Designers and artists can use actions to create various artistic and stylized effects, such as vintage looks, color grading, or texture overlays.
• Watermarking: Automating the process of adding watermarks or logos to images.
• Resizing and formatting: Actions can help resize images to specific dimensions or prepare them for web or print by adjusting color profiles and resolution.
• Workflow optimization: Actions can streamline your workflow by automating repetitive tasks, making your design or photo editing process more efficient.

Many Photoshop actions are available for download from online sources, and you can also create your own custom actions to suit your specific needs. Adobe Photoshop makes it easy to record, save, and manage actions, and they can be a valuable tool for professionals and hobbyists looking to speed up their editing and design processes.

Photoshop for Photographers

“Photoshop for Photographers” was designed as a supplemental resource for my class, “Photoshop for Photographers.” The goal is to teach you how to use Adobe Photoshop step by step. I understand this path is not for everyone and there is no reason you have to follow this process. However, if you want to really learn the program, I would suggest learning everything on the video and then move on.

“Sometimes you just need to have fun, give this watercolor image, and duotone a try.”

JOHN WHITEHEAD IMAGES

Photoshop Requirements and Hard Drives

Working in Adobe Photoshop and with photography is more than just installing software and saving images to your computer. Computers these days are using solid State Drives SSD, which are fast, but do not have a large storage capacity. If you start downloading a bunch of photographs to your computer, it will not take long until you get a “Scratch Disk Full” error. This means your internal hard drive is full. Just to run a computer and Adobe Photoshop you need a sufficient amount of free space. Image previews are usually stored in a computer’s cache. This a temporary storage so it can quickly retrieve previews without recreating them every time you look at them. I cover this in the my Photoshop Preferences Tutorial. Personally, I store all caches on an external hard drive. At this moment I have 4 different hard drives hooked up to my computer. Two SSD’s and two enterprise optical drives, each performing a different task. All these drives are backed up via BackBlaze.

Another important aspect of running any of Adobe’s products are them requirements. Adobe lists the minimum requirements to run each of their programs, but you never want to be using the minimums, or the speed will drive you nuts. You need to realize that that your computer and every other application you run have requirements. So if you have Photoshop’s min of RAM 4GB, that will not allow any for your computer to run or a browser like Chrome. Below I will have two lists. One is some reasonable minimum requirements to run Adobe Software and what I am running. The second is a list of issues you will run into with insufficient hard drive space, and low minimum requirements. Just about every online student that I teach run into these issues. I hope this helps.

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I have a Facebook Group called, “Learn Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, and Bridge.” I created this group because I get a lot of questions on YouTube that are hard to answer unless I can see the issue. This will allow a place you can ask questions, and more importantly post images and videos.