Recycle Images to create Graphic Novel looking pictures

I had a hard drive crash on me.  I was able to recover a lot of the data I thought I lost.  I found some images I hadn’t looked at in quite some time and thought….  What can I do with these.  So I began to play around with photoshop and this is what happened.

I took a normal looking image like this one and turned it into something out of a graphic novel. I know may people will say yes you posterized it or used poster edges but that is not the case.  Those filters don’t get the same effect.  In fact I used about 8 layers to get the final product.  I also find that you can’t use the same process on every photo.  Each time you begin the process changes slightly to make the image look correct.

Below is the final result of this image.

As you can see the entire photo is changed and it looks very much like a graphic novel image.  I combined different artistic, stylize and blur filters to get the effect above.  Here is a sample of the number of layers I used.  The final result has about 3 additional layers.

Here is another before and after…

And 2 more full size examples….

I really enjoyed creating these and writing this article.  Makes me think I could do a online graphic novel using real people since I can’t draw…  Again thanks for reading this.

I’m planning to write another post soon about the lens baby system and embracing the blur….

Creative Photo Editing

Sometimes you just have to get a bit creative to give your image that little extra spark. Maybe add a motion blur or zoom blur. Change the color a bit or in this case I did all of the above. First I desaturated the color making it almost black and white. Next I made a second layer and masked out my model. Then on the base layer I darkened it to give it a night look. Next on my mask layer I added a zoom blur and a motion blur centered on the area where the model would have been. Next I used a plugin to add a night vision effect. I then added a film grain to the top layer before setting the opacity to 90% and flatting the image. This is the result. Have fun with photo editing, there is a lot you can do it just takes a bit of trial and error!!
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad, Thanks – Allen