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The devil is in the details and sometimes you find yourself stuck on a simple step, tarnishing the success of your future great project! Nothing but frustration and exasperation stand in the way, ending up wasting your precious time. Don’t give up just yet! This demonstrative guide will make your worries fade away.
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The market of digital goods releases unique and artistic photo effects every day, you should keep up with its pace and know your way around. Our team hasn’t passed this movement by and as a result, we’ve carried out a whole bunch of attention-worthy products. Our photo effects can be rightfully called mockups, actually, based on the magic of Smart Object Layers. What’s their benefit? They’re extremely convenient to edit the images with, saving the original state of the edited graphics.
What is Smart Object in Photoshop?
Smart Objects are layers, containing their special characteristics, allowing to save the quality of the original source image when bringing changes to the layer itself. In Photoshop effects made by the principle of a mockup template, these Smart Layer Objects are internally linked, which means that if you update the source image, the main asset with the effect changes as well.
Judging from our own experience, the starting point where everyone begins losing their patience is adding the required graphics to the Smart Layer Object. Take a deep breath, download our free Vintage Watercolor Photoshop Effect and follow us on this creative journey.
Free Watercolor Photoshop Effect
It doesn’t have to take years for your images to obtain that artistic rough look. Any graphics can become a well-aged vintage treasure, discover the power of this Photoshop effect. Water splashes, stains, unclear edges — not disadvantages but creative elements of your illustrations and photos, edited with this very effect. Enjoy that watercolor-like imagery, achievable in a couple of minutes!
Step 1
After unpacking the downloaded .zip file, open the Effect.psd in Photoshop, where you’ll see the main artboard and the layers panel on the right. Both layers and folders are marked with color; the one we’re aiming for is a green one. You need to open it and insert the image you would like to have edited. Here comes the first bump:
Step 2
In order to add your graphics to the Smart Layer, you need to open it with left double-click the thumbnail of the ‘Your Image Here’ layer (not the layer itself).
This action will open the new tab with the Smart Layer to appear in addition to the main artboard, where your graphics belongs. Now in the layers panel, you’ll notice only three given layers: ‘Your Design Here’, ‘Delete Me’, and ‘color’.
Step 3
Go ahead and do what the ‘Delete Me’ layer says! When it’s gone, click the ‘Your Design Here’ layer to make it selected for future manipulations. What these will be? Dragging & dropping your image into the artboard and further edits.
Step 4
Adjust the size of your image to fit the canvas by stretching it. When everything’s in its place, press Enter. In order to add these changes to the Smart Layer and let them be that way, i’s vital to save the result. It can be done with the Cmd+S (Ctrl+S on Windows) or via the Photoshop menu panel: File > Save. Updating the Smart Layer will take some time, wait for a couple of seconds.
Step 5
It’s time to check on the main tab with the watercolor effect. Ta-daaa, the photo now looks like a beautifully-painted watercolor masterpiece!
That’s not it, you still have other folders of effects and background to play around with. Don’t be afraid to experiment, turn on/off the layers, change the color, adjust transparency and saturation. Here’s the complete walkthrough for the Vintage Watercolor Photo Effect.
