A life-changing way to scan watercolours

This afternoon, I started gathering things I want to bring with us to Åsen (two more days!!). A film camera, and many rolls of my favourite film – Kodak Ektar in case you’re wondering, two bags of stone-ground flour, a glazed ceramic tray, watercolours and brushes.

And in the center of the block of cold-pressed paper, I found these illustrations I made two summers or so ago. Sat on the patio of our cabin in Åsen, to the sound of raining trees.

And I thought I’d tell you about the life-changing way to scan watercolours. A simple trick that I read about on Elizabeth’s blog.

The process, which allows to control the rendered texture of the cold-pressed paper that makes editing a watercolour in Photoshop a pain, has become a favourite. And K. may have had to hear me ramble about it for a week or so, happy-dance included.

Step one: scan the watercolour

But scan it twice, rotating the image to 180° on the scanner bed for the second scan.

Step two: open in Photoshop

Layer both images, align the content, and set the top layer to 50% ( more or less, it’s up to you how much “texture” you want to show).

Step three: edit as you usually would

Which for me means: extracting the illustration using the channel panel, possibly correcting the white balance/saturation/contrast, and exporting.

For a more detailed instructions, please head over Elizabeth’s for a beautifully illustrated tutorial.