Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
I’m going to show you how to trasnform someone or something into the look of a classic 8-bit avatar.
There are many apps out there that do this automatically, but I thought it would fun
to show you how to do it in Photoshop.
Open a photo you'd like to use for this project.
I downloaded this one from Dreamstime.com.
First, let's convert it into a Smart Object, so we can modify it non-destructively.
To do this, click the icon at the upper, right of the Layers panel and click "Convert to Smart Object".
Go to Filter, Blur and Smart Blur.
This particular photo is 300 pixels per inch, so I'll use a pretty high Radius and Threshold
and keep the Quality High to get the amount of blur I'm looking for.
Feel free to adjust the amounts in Radius and Threshold to achieve a similar blur as mine.
I'll zoom out of the Preview a bit, so we can see more of it.
As I click and unclick on the preview, you can see how Smart Blur affects the image.
The Radius determines the degree of blurring applied, while the Threshold determines how
unalike the pixels must be before they're blurred.
Go to Filter and Filter Gallery.
Open the Artistic folder and click "Cutout".
Make the number of Levels: 8, the Edge Simplicity: 6 and the Edge Fidelity: 1.
Click the Adjustment Layer icon and click "Vibrance".
Drag the Vibrance slider all the way to the right, which increases the vibrancy of the
more muted colors and leaves the already well-saturated colors alone.
We'll make a composite snapshot of our visible image by pressing Alt + Ctrl + Shift + E on
Windows or Option + Cmd + Shift + E on a Mac.
Open the fly-out list and click "Duplicate Layer".
Make the Document, "New" and name it, "Subject filtered".
Notice, it created a new document of our image of the same name.
Go to Image and Image Size.
Make its Resolution: 8 pixels per inch and the Width or the Height: 64 pixels.
As long as one of them is 64 pixels the other can be any amount.
Make sure "Resample" is checked and click "Nearest Neighbor (hard edges)".
This will keep our square pixels nice and sharp when we reduce its size and resolution.
To fit it onto our screen, press Ctrl or Cmd + 0.
Go to Image, Mode and "Indexed Color".
This mode produces 8 bit image files with up to 256 colors.
Open the Palette list.
Let's click "Local (Perceptual)", since This palette is weighted toward reducing the colors
in your photograph to those to which we're the most sensitive.
The Local options are used for a single photograph, whereas, Master is used when you're working
on multiple open photographs that have the same color palette.
Adaptive is used to reduce colors based on their frequency.
For example, if your image contains mostly skin tones, the adaptive color palette will
be mostly skin tones.
Selective reduces colors of you image to web-safe colors.
We'll use 8 colors.
We won't "force" the colors to adhere to any color table, so we'll choose "None".
Since we have no transparent areas of the image, we'll uncheck "Transparency".
Under "Options", Matte is what's going to fill transparent areas, but in our case, that's "None".
"Dither" essentially blends colors together and since we don't want that,
we'll leave it as "None".
Open your Pencil Tool and Pencil Picker.
Pick a Hard Round brush.
The Size is 1 pixel and the Hardness is 100%.
Next, if your image needs it, we'll clean up some of the pixels.
To replace a color with another, press and hold Alt or Option as you click on the color
you want to use to replace another color.
Then release and draw over the areas you want to replace with that color.
Continue this method to clean the pixels in your avatar.
When you're happy with the result, go to Image, Mode and RGB color.
Then, Image and Image Size.
To show you how well it works, I'll type in 300 pixels per inch for its resolution and
accept the much larger Width and Height.
Notice that our squares are razor sharp.
Fit it back onto your screen.
If you want to remove the background, so you can place it onto another background,
open your Magic Wand Tool.
If your avatar has areas inside its outside shape, like the hole in the center of a donut,
make sure the "Add To" icon is selected.
This will retain all the selections you click on your subject.
Make its Tolerance 1 pixel and check "Contiguous",
which prevents the inside of your image from being selected. Click on the background to select it.
Invert the selection by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + Shift + I.
To check the selection, press "Q" on your keyboard to convert into a quick mask.
Revert it back into a selection by pressing "Q" again.
Click the Layer Mask icon to make a layer mask of the selection next to your avatar.
You can now place a new background below it.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
Thanks for watching!