It takes some real skill to draw realistic characters and portraits, but there’s a
shortcut you can take by processing a photograph with various filters in Photoshop to give
it a cartoon-like illustrated effect.
In today’s tutorial I’ll show you a cocktail of adjustments that mimic the outlines, colours,
and shading of a digitally painted image automatically, without the need to trace, paint or draw by
hand.
This effect can be applied to any image to transform a real photograph into an illustrated
cartoon graphic.
All the Photoshop filters that are used each play an important role in smoothing out the
details, outlining edges and creating colourful shading effects to achieve a bold art style.
Stick around until the end to see how the subject can be easily changed to apply the
effect to another picture in seconds.
This image is quite large, so I'm first going to bring it down to around 2000x3000 pixels.
Before making any further changes, convert the image into a Smart Object so all the edits
are applied non-destructively.
To allow the subsequent filters to define the edges of the subject, it first needs brightening.
Go to Image > Adjustments > Shadows/Highlights and increase the shadows value to around 35%
to brighten the darkest areas.
The Oil Paint filter is a great tool for smoothing out the details.
Apply it under the Filter > Stylize > Oil Paint menu, then set the parameters to 2.0
Stylization, maximum Cleanliness at 10, 0 Scale and Bristle Detail, then no Lighting
effects.
Go to the Filter menu, then choose Filter Gallery.
Find the Poster Edges effect under the Artistic category and set the values to 0 Edge Thickness,
1 Edge Intensity and 6 Posterization.
This filter adds some dark outlines similar to sketch lines.
Unfortunately the Poster Edges filter also brings out some nasty texturing in the detailed
areas of the photograph, so we’ll add a couple of filters to remedy them.
Go to Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise.
Set the Strength to max at 10, with all the other settings at zero.
A quick addition of Filter > Blur > Smart Blur with values of 4px Radius and 25 Threshold
helps to smooth out the result a little more.
A side effect of these steps is it blurs the whole picture a little too much.
Go to Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask to bring back the details.
Use settings of 70% and 4px Radius.
As a finishing touch to give the effect a cell-shaded appearance like comic book illustrations,
open the Filter Gallery menu again.
Choose Cutout, then set the Edge Simplicity to 4 and Edge Fidelity to 2.
Pan through the Number of Levels option to find a good array of shapes that are formed
from the shadows of the image.
Around 4-5 levels often provide the best results.
Double-click the little icon next to this latest Filter Gallery Smart Filter in the
Layers panel to edit its blending options.
Set the Mode to Soft Light to allow the colours to interact.
Reduce the Opacity value to between 50-70% to reduce the vibrancy of the colours.
The final result is a cartoon-like illustration effect with bold outlines, vibrant colours
and defined shading, all produced from an array of Photoshop Filters.
Now this effect has been applied to a Smart Object, the original photograph can be updated
to have the same effect applied to any image instantly.
Just double click the thumbnail of the Smart Object layer to open its contents, then paste
in and scale another image to fit the canvas.
Save and close this Smart Object PSB file to see the main document has been updated
with the new image with all the filters automatically applied