We recently had the pleasure of visiting Dallas Heritage Village in downtown Dallas, Texas. On their website they say this about themselves:

"Dallas Heritage Village is a living history museum portraying life in North Texas from 1840-1910. The museum is composed of 38 historic structures and boasts a working Civil War era farm, a traditional Jewish household, elegant Victorian homes, a school, a church & commercial buildings."

The image you see above was taken by my daughter, Heather, as we were walking down the street. It makes a nice water color.

Dallas Heritage Village actually uses a filter on some of their own images which you can see by going to their webpage at http://www.oldcitypark.org/ and viewing the five images toward the bottom of the page.

I've had students tell me that they take images of familiar things such as their home or a favorite vacation spot and give them new interest by "turning them into watercolors."

1. Use one of your own images, or if you prefer, you can download the Old City Park image to your computer by following the instructions in the column to the left in the section called Download Image.

2. Then open Photoshop Elements and click File on the Menu Bar and choose Open. Go to where you have saved the oldcitypark.jpg, click on the image and click on the Open button.

3. Press D on the Keyboard to set the Foreground/Background colors at the bottom of the Toolbox to black over white.

4. Choose Filter from the Menu Bar.

5. Click on the Artistic category and then click on Watercolor.

6. When the huge dialog box opens, to achieve the effect you see in the images at the top of this page, drag the sliders on the right side of the box to:

7. You can of course experiment around with your own figures. Click OK to finish.

8. Now we are going to give our image an artistic edge to enhance the watercolor effect:

• Choose the Cookie Cutter Tool from the Toolbox
• Click the dropdown arrow next to the Shape Options box
• Click the flyout menu button
• Choose Crop Shapes from the menu

9. The Crop Shapes will be added to the Shape menu--probably at the bottom. Double-click on one you would like to try (this will select the Crop Shape and close the box).

10. Left-click in the top left corner of the image window and drag down and to the right to drag a box around the edge of the watercolor. You can drag from the corner and side boxes to reshape the crop if you want to make adjustments. When you are finished press Enter or click the Green Check.

11. You will notice that the image is no longer on a locked background (the Cookie Cutter Tool makes it a regular layer when it does its work). You will see a gray and white checked grid around the edge. That stands for Transparency. We want to make that area white so we can better see if we like what we have done.

12. Click the Create new layer icon at the top of the Layers Palette.

13. Press D on the Keyboard to make sure the Foreground/Background colors at the bottom of the Toolbox are still black over white. Choose Layer from the Menu Bar and click on New>Layer from Background. This will put a white background under your watercolor image.

14. You may want to add some texture to the image to further the illusion of this being a painting. First you need to flatten the image so the filter will be applied to both layers at once. To flatten the image, choose Layer from the Menu Bar and click on Flatten Image.

15. Choose Filter from the Menu Bar and click on Texture>Texturizer.

16. Go to the right side of the dialog box and try the following:

17. Click OK to finish.