Tutorial: AKVIS Sketch

Creating a watercolor of a wolf

The author of the tutorial is Alexey Pasko. The example is created in Adobe Photoshop CS.

The description is given by the author himself.

I wanted to know how the AKVIS Sketch plug-in would handle fur, that is why I chose a photo of a wolf.

• Step 1. I blurred the copy of the original layer with Gaussian Blur filter at Radius = 1 pixel. Then I applied AKVIS Sketch with the following settings: Watercolor 0, Charcoal 0, Coloration 0, Angle 45, Size 9, Minimum/Maximum length 3/10, Midtones intensity 3, Midtones hatching 100, Sharpen 50.
  

  If I hadn't blurred the wolf before applying AKVIS Sketch, it would have looked like a hedgehog.

• Step 2. Then I copied the original layer again and blurred it at radius 0.7 px. Then I applied AKVIS Sketch plug-in with default settings. This time I got sharper strokes.
  
• Step 3. Then I used Clone Stamp to clone some parts from the image I got in Step 2 into the image I got in Step1. In the process I used a 10-30 px soft brush with transparency ranging from 90 to 100%.
  
• Step 4. I added a Curves Adjustment layer to the very top of the Layers palette to lighten the image and slightly increase the contrast.
  
• Step 5. Using Sharpen tool with Strength=20% I increased sharpness in certain areas of the image (eyes, nose etc.).
  
• Step 6. Then I changed the blend mode of this layer onto the original layer from Normal to Overlay.

  Click the image to open its larger copy in a new window

  This example is rather simple but there is an infinite number of variants. I liked this one - it reminds me of watercolor.