Now that you have created your own Pencil Filter, so to speak, you have an insight into what your Photoimpact program is really doing behind the scenes when you apply charcoal, oil paint, and colored pencil effects. It's using various preset blurs and edge finders in varying blending modes to create the final effect. So let's create our own Watercolor effect, 18th century style, wash over pencil.

1
Open the Fruit.jpg and immediately make a duplicate image. From the Edit menu choose Duplicate, then Base Image Only. Repeat ALL the steps from Part One. Now you have a nice little drawing of fruit, instead of hats and flowers. After you have merged all the objects Select All (CTRL+A), then copy to the clipboard (CTRL+C). From the bottom of the Window menu choose #1, the original Fruit.jpg.

2
Use the Tone Map from the Format menu to pump up the midtones again. Move the Midtone slider to +25. Next apply a Gaussian blur from the Effects menu, with a setting of 4. Then Edit - Paste (CTRL+V) your fruit drawing on top. Right-click, choose Properties, and change the Merge mode to Luminosity Only. Merge All Objects. Just add water and stir.

Any questions, comments, or additions (I like to learn, too), please send me a note at my E-mail.

As an afterthought, there is an apparent bug in PI6 (or maybe my head) that occurs when applying the Luminosity Merge mode. All the color of the underlying image is sometimes spread like a watercolor that's been dropped in the ocean. It's only happened twice, but it's a pain in the you-know-what. If I delete the object and start again, it works fine. If anyone else has experienced this, let me know.

Back to Part 1

Happy Designing

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