Wednesday, November 29, 2006

PHOTOSHOP CARTOON EFFECT TUTORIAL HOW-TO


I've been playing around for 6 months trying to find a way to render a cartoon effect to my pictures using Photoshop and lately I think that I've come up with something that produces a decent result. Here I will share with you how I do it and feel free to experiment yourself with this technique. On with the show...

First of all, this tutorial uses Photoshop Elements 1 because that's the one I have and the tutorial is possible to accomplish with just about any version of Photoshop, I think.

1. Open an image and duplicate the background into another layer so you have the same picture in two layers. The top one will be the "ink" and the bottom one will be the "color".



2. We'll start by making the "ink" first. Go into filter/blur/smart blur, use the settings in the image I've posted to start and experiment later.



3. After applying this filter, go to filter/sharpen/sharpen edges. This will better define the basic edges of your image.


4. Go to filter/other/highpass and use the settings in the image posted. This will turn the layer into a barely recognisable gray tone image.


5. Go to image/adjustment/threshold, this will turn the layer into a black and white line drwaing of the image. Play with the setting until you are satisfied with what you see. Once that is done, with the magic wand select a white area. Go to select/similar to to select everything white in the image. Press delete and your "ink" layer is done.


6. Now go back and click on your Background layer and go to filter/blur/smart blur and use the same settings as presented in the image. You can also play with the color settings of the background layer after you do this to make the colors brighter.


That's it, you're done. Add some background color, some letters, whatever you want. This is the basic way to do it. The image I chose for the tutorial is not the best one, but it shows that you can do this with just about any image. Bright colors and sharp lines make the best "cartoons".



For more of my stuff, check out my Photoblog: TakingPictures101.

Have fun and don't be afraid to experiment.

Gerry

33 comments:

Gerry Lauzon said...

Your welcome Kim. I'll have some more easy tips and tricks posted when I have a chance.

Gerry

Anonymous said...

good work gerry. this is so far the best ps tutorial for cartoon effect. keep sharing .. thanks

Anonymous said...

Excellent

Gerry Lauzon said...

Thanks :)

anusha said...

amazing.... its soo simple ... i tried it jus now n the output look really nice.
thanks


Anusha

Anonymous said...

Thanks, exactly what I wanted:D

Des said...

Glad I found this, as I'm using PE 2.0.

This isn't the only tutorial on cartoon effects (others recommend gaussian blur) but most come out looking not so cartoony.

I think the trick is to simplify colours a bit more, and more importantly, to spend more time beforehand simplifying and exagerrating features, before doing the effect.

colonelsandersf said...

Excellent, thanks a lot, greetings from Brazil!

Gerry Lauzon said...

I'm glad everybody likes this tutorial. Email me your creations if you want, I would love to see them.

Gerry :)

xddorox (at) gmail (dot) com

nick said...

Awesome tutorial Gerry.

My creation didn't turn out exactly as I wanted, but it's definitely a step in the right direction:

http://nickshim.tumblr.com/post/307514211/second-pass-at-cartoonizing-a-photo-used-this

Thanks!!

Anonymous said...

I found one here that works well with fewer steps.

http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/300C9A9F-6182-44C3-B78C-8E8A08C4B7F2/

Ian Buenconsejo said...

Holy Cow! This is the best tut i've ever seen. I've achieved expected results! Good job!

Usman said...

It's a real nice tutorial. Thanks for sharing.

AJ said...

Very simple.. perhaps too simple I thought.. but NO, it really works and is nice too!

Had a little difficulty converting an image of a sunflower.. so I found another image and it worked amazing :)

Thanks!!

Fabian said...

Thank you, it really helped me. Good job!

Anonymous said...

Sweet, thank you.

Unknown said...

Thanks a lot :)

Gerry Lauzon said...

You're welcome

Gerry :)

Anonymous said...

cool effect Gerry..i was looking for this one and a CG effect for photos..thanks for sharing!

Gerry Lauzon said...

My pleasure.

Gerry :)

Anonymous said...

I'm taking a digital photography class in high school, and one of our assignments is to make a cartoon. This was a lot of help! :)

viagra said...

Interesting article, added his blog to Favorites

Anonymous said...

This is absolutely great!
thank you so much for this tutorial, it's the best one I've found and I've used it here.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pipnopip/5427178093/

Thanks!! :D

Anonymous said...

thanks for this easy and useful tutorials
i apply it to girl photo but the result was a black and white sketched color
is this right the final result and i add the color on my need or there is something wrong i did?

Unknown said...

Thanks for taking the time to save us time!

Gerry Lauzon said...

Thank you all for taking the time to comment.

Gerry :)

Unknown said...

The end result of course depends on the source photo, but I can give a few hints on what to do if you think your end result still looks too much like a photo:
* In the #4 Highpass filter settings, raise the radius from 2 to 4-4,5, then use threshold 127 instead of 128.
* At least in Photoshop (don't know about PE) you can blend layers to change the colours, and among other things get good cartoon colours: When the tutorial is complete, click on the background layer and duplicate it (you will get a Background copy 2). Click on this new layer and select Blending Mode in the drop-down menu, select "Color Dodge" (you could also try the others, like Soft Light).

Gerry Lauzon said...

Thanks for sharing that info with us. That's pretty cool and I will definitely try it.

Gerry :)

tommypeters said...

Forgot to thank for your tutorial, it had fewer steps than the other tutorials I have tried, but with similar result.

Gerry Lauzon said...

Glad you liked it.

Gerry :)

Anonymous said...

Thanks so much this was great! used to make a cartoon like tire out of a real stock photo

DS Pictures said...

This is awesome.. changes how I'll be editing logos and pictures from now on.. Thanks

Gerry Lauzon said...

Glad I could help.

Gerry :)