Watercolor technique tutorial - also works for Manga
Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2017 1:50 pm
Greetings All -
Just thought I would give a basic outline on converting a photo to a watercolor / graphic - on the cheap.
This shoot started as just a learning exercise - it just happened to turn out pretty well. I am by no means a photographer or graphic artist. I just used my basic macbook, iphone camera, and an app called PhotoScape X - Pro - $30 from app store and there is a windows version as well.
So the exercise was to figure out shooting a lying down subject to make her appear to be standing - as Shelby doesn’t stand like my Nikki. After about 60 shots going back and forth to the computer to see how they look, I got about the right angle figured out.
Next was to pick a background. I had already downloaded about 6 or 7 that I liked, but you never know (atleast as an amateur like myself) what angle and perspective is going to work until you get the subject pic you want and then scale it and place it a dozen times on a background to see if both will work together. This one I felt would.
Then, with just the Mac Preview tool box - I cropped the raw photo down as tight as I could. (4) And then I like to first take the selector (rectangle) and delete chunks. When you delete your first one it’ll pop up and say you need to convert to PNG - which you want to do. That will retain a transparent background where you delete. (5) And delete away. You don’t have to get too close to the subject - so don’t worry about it.
With the magic wand selector start selecting the background in sections that don’t include any of the subject, clothing, hair, etc. and hit delete each time.
So at this point I realized, ah crap, I shot her wearing a white shirt and white socks on a WHITE background. Only thing worse would have been all black. Normally I would shoot against a green screen for standing or an obnoxious teal flat sheet for laying down. But I decided to stick with it as it was just a learning exercise. Glad I did however, as it turned out to be a huge benefit….
For illustration purposes, i’ve taken the image I’m working on and pasted it to a black background so you can see the rough and messy edge detail close up.
Normally, for masking, this would be considered be an unmitigated disaster. Cleaning up all the free floating bits and rough edges (circled) would be near impossible. But for watercolor, sketching, manga, etc. it's turning lemons into lemonade. Even if by sheer dumb luck in my case.
Now I’ve got her mostly cleaned up. Note, I knew from scaling her against my background before I started that she would be cut off somewhere around the top of the socks. So I didn’t bother with that part. Ok, so I’m lazy.
But, as with all cases of dumb luck, I ran across another background that I could leverage not having cleaned up her feet.
to be continued -
Just thought I would give a basic outline on converting a photo to a watercolor / graphic - on the cheap.
This shoot started as just a learning exercise - it just happened to turn out pretty well. I am by no means a photographer or graphic artist. I just used my basic macbook, iphone camera, and an app called PhotoScape X - Pro - $30 from app store and there is a windows version as well.
So the exercise was to figure out shooting a lying down subject to make her appear to be standing - as Shelby doesn’t stand like my Nikki. After about 60 shots going back and forth to the computer to see how they look, I got about the right angle figured out.
Next was to pick a background. I had already downloaded about 6 or 7 that I liked, but you never know (atleast as an amateur like myself) what angle and perspective is going to work until you get the subject pic you want and then scale it and place it a dozen times on a background to see if both will work together. This one I felt would.
Then, with just the Mac Preview tool box - I cropped the raw photo down as tight as I could. (4) And then I like to first take the selector (rectangle) and delete chunks. When you delete your first one it’ll pop up and say you need to convert to PNG - which you want to do. That will retain a transparent background where you delete. (5) And delete away. You don’t have to get too close to the subject - so don’t worry about it.
With the magic wand selector start selecting the background in sections that don’t include any of the subject, clothing, hair, etc. and hit delete each time.
So at this point I realized, ah crap, I shot her wearing a white shirt and white socks on a WHITE background. Only thing worse would have been all black. Normally I would shoot against a green screen for standing or an obnoxious teal flat sheet for laying down. But I decided to stick with it as it was just a learning exercise. Glad I did however, as it turned out to be a huge benefit….
For illustration purposes, i’ve taken the image I’m working on and pasted it to a black background so you can see the rough and messy edge detail close up.
Normally, for masking, this would be considered be an unmitigated disaster. Cleaning up all the free floating bits and rough edges (circled) would be near impossible. But for watercolor, sketching, manga, etc. it's turning lemons into lemonade. Even if by sheer dumb luck in my case.
Now I’ve got her mostly cleaned up. Note, I knew from scaling her against my background before I started that she would be cut off somewhere around the top of the socks. So I didn’t bother with that part. Ok, so I’m lazy.
But, as with all cases of dumb luck, I ran across another background that I could leverage not having cleaned up her feet.
to be continued -