Photo Manipulation Using Watercolor Brushes and Rock Pattern in Photoshop

Watercolor brushes are versatile brushes that you can use for a lot of photo manipulation works. In this Photoshop tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to create this Photo Manipulation Using Watercolor Brushes and Rock Pattern in Photoshop.

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Note: The Photoshop tutorial is done in Photoshop CC – therefore some screenshot may have slighting different layout as in the earlier version. Some brushes are exclusive to Photoshop CS6.

Here is a preview of the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

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To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stocks:

Model by svp-stock

Watercolor Brush 1

Watercolor Brush 2

Watercolor Brush 3

Rock Texture

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1400px*874px with black background. Load the model image into Photoshop and select the model:

Copy and paste the selection to our document, place the model to the position as shown below:

Remove the hair accessory using an soft eraser tool:

Fix a bit of the facial imperfection using the Clone Stamp Tool:

Clone Stamp tool setting you should use:

and here is the effect so far:

Step 2

Load the watercolor brushes into Photoshop, use some brushes of your choice from those sets as eraser:

Set the eraser opacity to 50% and Flows to 80%:

Apply this eraser to the model layer as shown below:

Step 3

Apply the following 3 adjustment layers as clipping masks to the model layer:

Black and White (make sure you mask out the lips and eyes area)

Levels

Curves

and here is the effect so far:

Step 4

Create a new new under the model layer, use a red watercolor brush and paint some pattern on it:

You will be able to see parts of the painting through the model’s face:

Step 5

We will work on adding some rock textures onto our design in this step. Load the rock texture into Photoshop and select a piece from it:

Copy and paste the selection to our document, attach it to the neck area as shown below:

Apply the following adjustment layers onto this rock layer:

Black and White

Levels

and here is the effect so far:

Repeat this process, add more rock texture onto the neck area:

Also add some around the eyes and lips area, make sure you don’t cover the eye:

Step 6

We will add some hair for the model. Go back to the model layer and use a Lasso Tool with 30px feather and make a selection of hair like this:

Duplicate this hair selection, and on the duplicated layer use this black and white filter:

Then use the Free Transform Tool to warp the hair as shown below:

Move it to the following position:

Again we duplicate this hair layer a few times, move and attach them together to form a hair effect as shown below:

Step 7

We can add some more watercolor effect on the top by using the watercolor brush – make sure you set the flow and opacity of the brush to be around 50%:

We can use the rock texture to create a back drop for our design – make a selection of the rock as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection to our document, and make sure it covers the entire canvas. Apply the following image adjustments to this rock layer:

Black and White

Levels

Mask out the model portion on the rock layer:

Reduce the layer opacity of the rock back drop layer to be around 15%:

Step 8

We’re almost done! To finalise the effect, we can flatten the image and duplicate the background layer, sharpen the image by using the following Unsharp Mask Filter:

Add some colours to our image by using the following image adjustment layers:

Selective Color

Color Balance

I further create a new layer on top and set its layer blending mode to “Overlay”, use some pink and red watercolor brushes and paint some extra pattern around the model:

and here is my final result: (click to enlarge)

That’s it for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy it and find it useful! If you have any questions about the steps, please contact me or leave a comment below. I will try my best to answer them.

Till next time, have a great day!