Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Cartoon Like Images Using the Smart Blur in Photoshop

Picture without the Smart Blur effect

Picture with cartoon effect using Smart Blur

Who knows if I will ever really need to do this, but it was fun just the same.  Since it was something new that I haven't tried, I thought that I would make a post about it, that way in the future...I could reference it again if I needed to.  To create this cartoonish effect, I played around with the Smart Blur in the Filters Menu in Photoshop.

1.  Open image that you would like to make cartoon like.

2.  Duplicate the layer, can be done by hitting "control and the J key".

3.  On that new duplicate layer, go up to the menu bar and select the "Filter" Menu and go to "Blur".

4.  A drop down menu will pop up and towards the bottom you will see "Smart Blur"...click it.

5.  A little dialog box labeled "Smart Blur" should pop up.

6.  On this image I used a "radius" of 10.9, and a "threshold" of 26.  Just play around to see what looks best to you.  Note: you can click on the little plus/minus sign to see your image in that box, and just click on the black image and your picture will pop up in color.

7.  Still in that box on "Quality" click on "Medium", and for "Mode" click on "Edge Only".

8.  Click "OK".

9.  Now you should have a black layer with some white lines on it, so now you need the inverse.  Click "control and I key" at the same time to get the inverse.  It should now be mainly white now and look cartoon like.

10.  Now go to your blending modes, which is right next to your "Opacity" slider above your Layers Palette and select "Soft Light".

11.  At this time you can lower your opacity to what you think looks good, I did about 85% or so.

12.  I wanted a little more definition, so I made a duplicate layer "control and J key" and changed that blend mode to "Color Burn" and then adjusted the opacity for that layer also.

That is it!  Easy Peasy as my friend Alexis would say! :)

Here is a different example of a building and instead of soft light blending mode I picked hard light.

Original

Cartoon like...sorta


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