Graphics Tips

Adobe Photoshop Elements Tip: Comic Art Effect

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Okay, so we said we'd never do this, but here it is: one of our tutorials translated for Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0. I don't think this is going to become the norm or anything--most of our tutorials rely heavily on Channel operations (ChOps) and Layer Masks and those are not simple to get around with Elements.

That said, what follows is an Adobe Photoshop Elements version of our Comic Art Effect tutorial. It might be more accurate to say that this is a version of the Comic Art Effect Action we released a while back that has been explained in Adobe Photoshop Elements terms.

Anyway, on with the tutorial...

Hey man, if somebody takes a picture of something and then you get Photoshop Elements 3 to draw the same thing right on top of it, only going outside the designated original art to make it looks somewhat comic book like, what do call that? I call it my latest tutorial!

Use this baby to convert your digital pictures and scans into comic book style illustrations. Nothing can take the place of talent ...except for maybe a relative who works high up in the business...but this tutorial will get the idea across without requiring any artistic talent at all.

Disclaimers, conditions and preparations

Start with a good, flattened, high resolution RGB image--at least a 5" by 3" image at 300ppi--that you've color corrected and sharpened. If the image is bad, the result of this tutorial will also be bad--I can't stress this enough.

The color and richness of the image is actually more important than the resolution. If your resolution is below 5" by 3" image at 300ppi, go into Image>Resize>Image Size... and increase the resolution and image size (make sure Resample Image is checked). This tutorial only uses the image as a guideline but requires a lot of pixels to draw the result nicely. Now, let me tell you, this is the only time it is alright to up-sample a low resolution picture to pass as a high resolution image.

If you're ready, let's get started...

Step 1: Tone

With your image open in Elements, open up the Layers palette if it isn't already and duplicate the Background layer. Name this new layer "Tone"

We're about to do some things that may make you wonder if I know what I'm doing. Well, I wonder some times too. But trust me for now. Go to Filter>Artistic>Poster Edges... and plug in a value of 0 for Edge Thickness, 0 for Edge Intensity and 1 for Posterization and click OK. Not bad.

Now go Filter>Artistic>Cutout... and set the Number of Levels to 4, the Edge Simplicity to 3 and the Edge Fidelity to 2 and click OK. (Extra points if you do both filters in one go from the Filter Gallery) Scared now? Here's what mine looks like...

Now go Filter>Blur>Smart Blur... and use a Radius setting of 6.0, a Threshold of 80.0, set the Quality to High and the Mode to Normal and hit OK.

Adjust the Levels by going Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Levels... and enter input values of 62, 0.6 and 255 and output levels of 100 and 255 (see below).

Finish off the Tone layer by going Filter>Adjustments>Posterize... and apply a value of 6

I know. It might not look promising, but it will improve. Actually, this layer will set the tonal foundation for our color, but not the color itself. I could have made tone and color on one layer, but I had inconsistent results and this method provides greater control...which you'll see later.