Here are 2 examples…
Getting Started
Get your own picture
Find a scene type of picture that is at least 900px width. Do a Google search for your photo topic, then set the “Tools” search to “Large”
Here’s the picture I used – you can see it’s definitely big enough! Do not use this, find your own picture!
If it is larger than width 1200px (as you can see my starting picture is)…
…go to Image>Image Size… and reduce the width to 1200px.
Duplicate Photo Layer
- Delete the empty Background layer.
- Duplicate the photo layer by pressing CTRL+J.
- Rename this new layer Soften.
Filters & Adjustments
Surface Blur
Go to Filter>Blur>Surface Blur…
- Radius to 2-4 (depending on the size of your picture)
- Threshold of 15
Desaturate
- Duplicate the ‘soften’ layer (CTRL+J).
- Rename it ‘desaturated’.
- Desaturate it using the keyboard shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+U.
Luminosity
Create a new layer. Name this layer Halftone.
Switch over to the Channels tab in the Layers palette. Holding down the CTRL key while clicking on the RGB Channel’s layer icon.
Your document looks like this…
Darken
- Click back over to the Layers tab and make sure that the new Halftone layer is selected.
- Invert the selection by choosing Select>Inverse from the main menu or CTRL+SHIFT+I. The Luminosity of the image is most simply described as the lightness of the image. What we actually want to do however is select the exact opposite (the darkness of the image).
- Press the D key to set your foreground color to black.
- Fill the selection by pressing ALT+BACKSPACE.
Now we can deselect the selection (CTRL+D).
Cutout Filter
Hide the top two layers. Click on the Soften layer to select it as the layer we’ll be working on first.
The Soften layer will be acting as the color layer for the comic book effect, but at the moment it contains far too much detail.
Go to Filter>Filter Gallery>Artistic>Cutout….
- Set the Number of Levels to 8 (maximum),
- the Edge Simplicity to 0 (minimum) and
- the Edge Fidelity to 3 (maximum).
More Vibrance
Since the Cutout filter has dulled our color and typically comic book colors are quite vivid…
- Duplicate the layer (CTRL+J) and
- Switch the new layer’s Blend Mode to Soft Light (giving our colors more vibrance).
Poster Edges Filter
Show and select the ‘desaturated’ layer.
The desaturated layer will now become the black outlines for our comic book effect.
Go to Filter>Filter Gallery>Artistic>Poster Edges – Set all 3 options to “1” and click OK.
Change the layer’s Blend Mode to Pin Light so we can get the color to show through from the layers behind while keeping the edge outlines we just created.
We’re now done with the Desaturate layer.
Color Halftone
Click the halftone layer and make it visible.
First let’s load the layer as a selection by holding down the CTRL key and clicking on the layer thumbnail in the Layers palette.
Add the layer mask button to convert the selection to a layer mask.
The layer mask on the Halftone layer should now be selected, you can tell because it will have small black brackets around it.
Now go to Filter>Pixelate>Color Halftone.
Maximum Radius: 4-6 pixels.
For the size of my image (which is width 1200px) I’m going to use a setting of 6, but if your picture is smaller, reduce (4 = minimum).
You should see nice sized dots now…
With the layer mask still active, invert it (CTRL+I).
Click on the layer’s actual thumbnail to switch our working area back to the actual layer. Change the layers Blend Mode to Soft Light allowing more of the color to come through while nicely retaining the halftone effect.
Curves
Make sure nothing is selected in your document – deselect (CTRL+D) before doing this step!
This overall effect sometimes ends up producing an image that’s a little darker than I prefer, so to remedy this I’m going to add an adjustment layer….
Select Curves…
Grab the center point of the line and drag it up and to the left just a little to lighten the mid tones of the image while leaving the black and white points where they are.
So my layers palette and image now look like this…
Outline
Let’s create a nice black outline around our photo.
- Create a new layer called outline.
- Fill the layer with the foreground color by pressing ALT+BACKSPACE, don’t worry about the color.
- Reduce the Fill opacity to 0%.
- Then go to add layer style…
Choose Stroke layer style to create the outline. Set the color to black, type to ‘inside’ and the amount to 15-20 (depending on the size of your picture).
Here’s my image with the Stroke applied.
Canvas
Zoom out. Then click on your canvas until your picture is smaller and you see lots of space around your picture/canvas. Then select the Crop Tool and pull out the edges so you have an even amount of space around your picture/canvas…
Enter to apply the cropping.
Add a Solid Color adjustment layer…
Choose a light color and move the adjustment layer down to the bottom of your Layers panel…
Double-click on the Hand Tool to fill your screen area with your photo/canvas…
Speech Bubble
Organize your layers – select them all (SHIFT-click) and group them (CTRL+G).
Click off in the empty area before adding the next thing…
Set your colors back to default (‘D‘).
Go to Custom Shapes…
In the options bar on the right, go into the Legacy Shapes folder and look for “Talk Bubbles” (or double-click on the “Speech Bubble” file in your Photoshop Resources folder.
Once it’s loaded, choose the shape you want to use…
Draw it out (on “Shape”) – then set fill to white, stroke to black (adjust size).
It should be above the Group folder.
Move it where you want it. You may also need to CTRL+T and flip it or rotate and shape it to fit your picture…
Select the Text Tool – click anywhere on your speech bubble… you’ll see a dotted rectangle/outline for your text….
Type – type out a phrase or question and then set the font type to “Kristen” or “Orator”. Adjust the size as needed. Adjust the squares of the text outline to move/position the text in the bubble.
Click off and see how it looks…
Text at Bottom
Rectangle
Draw out a Rectangle Shape at the bottom of your canvas.
Set the Fill to white, and the Stroke to about 8-10px.
Text
Before adding text, click in the empty area of the Layers panel at the bottom so none are active/selected.
Select the Text Tool and type out the word(s) you will use to describe the movie/TV show etc that the picture is from. Set the font type to a fun type of font and a good size (I’m using “Postino”, size 48). Move it so it starts at the left side of the rectangle…
Then CTRL+T on the Rectangle shape layer and make it smaller/bigger to fit your text…
Enter to apply the transformation.
First Letter
Duplicate the text layer (CTRL+J).
Move the top text layer out of the way…
- Edit top text layer and delete all the letters except the first one.
- Edit the original text layer and delete the first letter.
Now make the first letter bigger (CTRL+T) – hold SHIFT as pull out a corner.
Also change the fill color to a bright color, and move it into place (slightly on/over edge)…
Add layer style Stroke to the first letter … set it to ‘Outside’, black and play with the size so your first letter is dramatic…
So your layers should look like this…
Here’s my final result…
