Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
I'm going to show you how to create a "Low Poly" portrait from a photo.
A "low poly" graphic is a polygon mesh in 3D computer graphics that has a relatively
small number of polygons. Open a photo you'd like to use. For the purpose of this video,
choose a subject who's looking directly at you. I downloaded this one from Shutterstock.com.
We only need to create this effect for half of the face since we'll copy the effect and
then flip it to the other side to create the entire face. Before we start to make the polygons,
let's prepare our document to ensure that we get the fastest and best results.
Go to View and if "Rulers" and "Snap" aren't checked, just click on them.
Go back to View, “Show” and “Grid”.
Go to Edit, "Preferences" and "Guides, Grids & Slices...".
In the "Grid" section, choose "Lines" and "Pixels". For this example, I'll choose a gridline every
20 pixels with 1 subdivision. For the color of the grid, I like using 50% grey, because
it shows up well on most colors and shades. If your color box isn't grey, click it and
type in 0,0 and 50% for its Hue, Saturation and Brightness or you can type in 80, three
times. Then, click OK or press Enter or Return to close the windows.
It's always a good idea to make a copy of your original image or convert it into a Smart Object.
For this example, let's just copy it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + J.
We'll start make polygons on the eyes. Remember, we're only
going to working on half of the face and then flip it. For this image, I'll work on the
left screen side of her face. Zoom into the eye of your subject by pressing "z" on your
keyboard to open your Zoom Tool and dragging over that eye. To reposition it on your canvas,
press and hold the Space bar as you drag your image.
Open your Polygonal Lasso Tool
and uncheck Anti-alias to keep the polygons from having any transparency along their edges.
Before we begin, we’ll be making the polygons triangular in shape and their sizes should
correspond to areas of your image that have specific angles or consistent color and tonal
values. Each time you click on a corner of the grid, it'll snap directly on the corner
because we have "Snap to Grid" checked. When you click back onto the original point, you'll
see a small circle that let's you know the path is complete. It immediately changes into
a selection. Go to Filter, Blur and Average.
The colors of the area inside the selection averages out to a flat color.
To deselect it, press Ctrl or Cmd + D.
To make another polygon,
we're going to make a parallel path over one side of the first polygon by clicking
on two corners
and then clicking on another corner of the grid. Complete the path by clicking
on the first point. To repeat the last filter you used, press Ctrl or Cmd + F and then deselect
it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + D. Remember, each polygon is a representation of a color,
tone or angle of your subject. Continue these steps to create polygons over all the sections of the entire eye.
If you want to zoom out, press Ctrl or Cmd and the minus sign a couple of times.
Continue to make triangular polygons that conform to specific areas of angle, or color and tone.
For this example, I'll just keep the areas around the face extremely simple,
so I'm making the polygons quite large. If you want your subject to be over a solid,
flat background, make sure your subject has space around it, so you can ultimately cut
it out from its existing background.
If you want to create a highlight on the pupil of the eye,
zoom into it
and make a small triangular, pyramid shape in the grid over the darkest
area of the pupil. Fill it with white. Since white is my background color,
I'll press Ctrl or Cmd +Delete.
Then, I'll deselect it
and zoom back out.
Next, we'll crop the left screen side of the subject.
Open your Rectangular Marquee Tool
and drag a selection over the left half of the grid.
Press Ctrl or Cmd + J
to cut and copy it to its own layer.
Press Ctrl or Cmd + T to open your Transform Tool. Go to the left, middle
point of the Transform and when you see a horizontal, double-arrow, drag it across until
it snaps to the right side of your document. Then, press Enter or Return.
Click the Adjustment layer icon and click Levels.
Click the clipping mask icon.
This will restrict the adjustment layer
to effect just the one layer beneath it in the Layers panel.
Drag the Input midtones to the right to darken half the face.
This gives the center edge of the face the visual appearance of triangular polygons To hide
the grid, press Ctrl or Cmd + H.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
Thanks for watching!