There are a couple of filters in Photoshop that I would like to immulate and can't seem to come up with the right combination.

First they render some clouds.
Second they apply the "watercolor" filter. (Gimp's watercolor filter looks like black worms)
Third they apply the "chrome" filter.

Anybody want to try and recreate this effect? Lyle? Mahvin? Anyone? I've tried every filter and combination I can think of that comes close and I just can't get there.

Link to the tutorial?

i don't think there is a tut but link for the filters or at least their exact name will help

He mentioned 3 processes they use. I just wanted to see for myself in case something "clicked".

For 'chrome' I used a greyscale image with a white background and a selection,(no alpha channel), go to Filters-Decor-Stencil_chrome,for this image, I used a selection from wilbur.

For PS Chrome, the closest I could get was using Difference Clouds (Turbulent) x and y at 2 each, then run G'MIC water filter and adjust amplitude, etc..

I'm sure with more testing you could get it even closer to the PS effect. I notice that in PS the difference clouds are spread out a great deal more than they are in GIMP, which could be the reason the outcome is so different.

That's pretty close for the chrome Mahvin. Maybe a curves/contrast adjustment to get the highlights to stand out more like in the PS example. It almost looks like a combination of the "Graphic Novel" filter and the two you used.

I found the link to the last one I was fooling around with. It's pretty long and the steps I am referring to are quite a ways down in the tut where they start decorating the top text layer.

http://textuts.com/3d-skyscraper-text-e ... s5-part-1/

The watercolor example really throws me. Surely there is a gmic solution. If not, we could definitely use a new filter that would do it.

The closest I could get with the watercolor effect involved using Gentlemanbeggar's bokeh blur and the sponge filter in G'MIC. But it wasn't close enough for me to think of sharing the result.

The following was done with GIMPressionist. Is it close to the watercolor effect?

I was going to mention GIMPressionist. The most overlooked, undervalued and misunderstood plugin in Gimp...

So cryptic the comments in the code state they don't know what it does....

Nice examples can be found here:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User: ... ressionist

-Rob A>

Good examples, Rob. Thanks for sharing.

Drac:

I am going to step out on a limb here and say, that even though the GIMP result of those actual filters used in PS will not be identical, the intended result of why those filters were used, will be very, very close. The author uses those filters to create lighting effects on the text surface. I am going to encourage you to try Saulgoode's GIMPressionist method for watercolor, and try the work-around Chrome effect and use them in the same fashion and then check your result to the tutorial. I'm confident you'll be pleased with the outcome.

Looks a lot closer than what I came up with. Mind sharing a screenshot of the settings you used? Here they are side by side.

I tend to agree Mahvin. Now that we've sort of beat this horse to death, you guys did come up with closer results. I admit I never did try the Gimpressionist filter. I was working backwards with the chrome going with watercolor first then metalic look instead of vice versa. Thanks everyone!

Just tried something and got a little closer. I duplicated the Gimpressionist result that Saulgood did and did edge detection with Sobelmaxed out , then inverted the colors and made the mode overlay. I adjusted the opacity to about 50% and then went back to the original layer and adjusted the curve up just a tad.

I ended up running the edge detect again, overlay, opacity at 20% and adjusting the color balance to get the dark areas darker and then desaturate the luminance.

Somebody needs to make us a filter to do this. There's just too many steps to get to the same result.

Attached is the settings file (gzipped). Unzip it and place it in your .gimp-2.6/gimpressionist/Presets folder and then it should appear as "Watercolor" once you've refreshed your filter.

The one thing that caught me when first using GIMPressionist is that the "Darken edges" slider needs to be set to "0" if you don't want your brush edges to show; this even if you have the "Paint edges" checkbox unchecked.

Did you look at the top of the list under the Presets tab?

One other thing, if your single user location (.gimp-2.6/gimpressionist) doesn't have a Presets folder, you need to create one. I also created a Paper and Brushes folder as well.

It worked for me. I just finished trying it. It will show up in artistic > gimpressionist > watercolor

Thanks for the preset Saulgoode. I'll give 'er a whirl next time I open gimp and start playin'.

I am using the preset, but the outer edge of the image is without the effect. It is more pronounced the smaller the image. Any ideas on how to correct this?

Nixnine: I can't duplicate your problem. What filetype are the images?