Tutorial Times: Graphic Novel Effect

I've managed to stay functional all week, but I'll admit I continue to battle the frustrations of cabin fever.  I try to chain myself to the apartment, my budget as challenged as the fiscal cliff, I attempt to limit my spendings on groceries and absolute necessary purchases.  Of course I justify perusing the thrift stores - thanks to my new shopping techniques adopted from Beka (nothing is worth spending more than $5), its not the jump in logical explanation that the government is providing for cutting tuition assistance for our troops... (pardon my political commentary).  After all, I have a summer internship coming up in Tacoma, WA, where the average temperature ranges from 40 - 60 degrees.  I need layers, dammit!

As it turns out, I'm still forbidden from hitting the pavement as I battle a floating/wandering bone in my feet, instead limiting myself to strengh-training, yoga, and drooling.  Thus I also can't permit myself to wander the streets of Augusta with a photo challenge.  I can walk, and spend time on my feet, but I can't - in good sense - justify the risk when I don't feel I could outrun the criminals that inhabit Augusta's less savory areas. I must find other activities to occupy my time.

This week, between baking health-conscious muffins for Charlie Company's BK-dietitians/addicts and hunting for a green shirt to force on Matt for tomorrow's family St. Pat's dinner at my parent's house, I entertained myself with a few tutorials in photoshop.

One was an Avatar tutorial, which was in Spanish.  And, as it turns out, does not work so well with a non-professional photo.  Since I do not have permissions from people to publish altered photos of them, I was left with photos of Matt and myself to play with... which are not professional quality.  So... I didn't finish it because the direction it was going in, as you can see, was very... off.  Still, I'll link the tutorial I used.  A forewarning, though, it requires you to hunt down your own tattoos and avatar eyes.  Which I'm pretty sure is copyright infringement, but hey, don't use it for financial gain, and I won't tell, ok?

Originally, my idea was to black out the back and edit our clothes to look kinda bohemian, but the faces started to freak me out, so I abandoned ship mid-project.

Anyway, what I did enjoy, and I believe turned out quite well, was a cartoon/graphic novel effect I kind of threw together myself.  Per the usual way, I created my own technique the same way my mom creates her "recipes:"  Take three or four different ways, and twist them together into your own creation.  I'll link the tutorials I used below.

1. Start with a high - contrast image.  If your image isn't high-contrast (ie: significant light vs. dark), you can doctor it with an Adjustment (using Curves or the Burn/Dodge tool), but it probably still won't look particularly amazing.  The computer needs significant contrast to create an outline, much like your autofocus on your camera needs some contrast to set a focal length.



2.  Duplicate the layer.  (Right-click on the layer and select "Duplicate Layer" from the drop-down menu).  Make sure the foreground color is black and the background is white. With the top layer selected, go to Filter > Sketch > Stamp.  Play with the Light/Dark and Smoothness levels until you get something you're happy with.  Click OK or Apply.




3.  You should now have a black and white rough outline of your image.  With this layer still selected, change the Layer Blend to "Multiply."  This will mostly eliminate the white parts so you have a black outline over your digital image.  I erased elements I thought took away from the image, like excessively baggy under eyes or phantom shadows.  The finished product looks ok, but not really like somebody drew it.





















4.  Select the bottom layer (the original digital image).  What I usually do when applying filters is make sure I always have the original still available in case I don't like my end product, so duplicate the layer again an rename the bottom-most layer "Original."  Click the eye next to it so it becomes hidden and out of the way.  Select the unnamed layer, rename it "Palette Knife" and go to Filter>Artistic>Palette Knife.  Play with the settings until you get something you like.  I'd suggest enabling the Preview so you can see it behind your black outline.  Click OK/Apply.

Pay attention to what kind of detail you want to carry over in your effect.  I'm paying attention to Matt's eyebrows and the color intensity/ brightness of his eyes.

I did this with a few different images, trying it with both Palette Knife and Paint Daubs effects to see which was more appropriate.  I found Paint Daubs left more detail in the textures, where Palette Knife put more vibrant color in, so I think it just depends on what image you're working as to which effect you want to use. (Surprisingly, Watercolor just looked like a mess, which was the first effect I tried.)

For this particular image, all the detail Paint Daubs effect gives me is held up with the stamp, so I ended up using the Palette Knife in my finished image.

In all of the images I played with, I made several effect layers to test Palette vs Paint.  The layer that held the detail I wanted is the one I kept.

5.  Voila!  Easy, quick, cartoonized graphic-novel effect.

















Check it out: (Sources)

Avatar Tutorial - It's in Spanish.  Why I chose to follow the one in Spanish is still a mystery, but I do think I'll end up trying it again when I get some good shots of people and get permissions to transform them into a fictional alien creature.... with my own twists/shortcuts, of course.

Cartoon Technique #1 - TechGuyTales, Youtube.com - This was the foundation of my technique.  This guy goes into some intense color-over detail, but I wasn't particularly that patient at the time.*

Cartoon Technique #2 - PhotoShopDudes, Youtube.com - If you have the patience to stick with this guy through his oopsies, by all means.  I can't blame him, but this is exactly why I don't make video tutorials.  Joking smiley face.*

*Both of these tutorials use vaguely similar techniques, hand coloring in with paintbrush.  Which I find to be a complete waste of time.  If I wanted block color, I would use the Pen tool and create a Clipping Mask.  Alas, Photoshop is a miracle time-saver and can do the coloring for you.  So... why waste the time?

Cartoon Technique #3 - via Illustrator - Jesse Hora Dot Com via VectorTuts.com - This is the old, traditional way I have done cartoons in the past, it's more free-form, hand-drawn computer-style... if you like hyphens.  I used this technique in my Senior Portfolio, and it turned out pretty well.  This guy is a lot better.

Self-portrait circa 2011 for my Senior Portfolio (Free-hand with photo reference in Illustrator), with one of my favorite quotes from my favorite book in high school.

Photography Philosophy: A Lily in the Storm

I had trouble falling asleep last night.  Matt had conked out by 9:30, having battled fatigue all week long as he hammered away at the pile of legal messes his soldiers had created for him. He snored not-so-lightly as I waited for sleep to come, finishing out a disc of How I Met Your Mother, and mind wandering to and fro, comparing the person I was two years ago to the person I am now, how different I thought my life would be now.  At some point, I gave up on nodding off to one of Barney's long lists of rules or 83% statistics, and rolled onto my side, closing my eyes and willing the sheep to fly across my cranium.  I dreamt I was photographing a large plain, a wide expanse of tall grasses, a storm raging in the distance.  For whatever reason, the spot I set up my tripod was right in front of a callilily.  Must have been a stubborn little bastard to survive in a dry plain, but who's to question the wanderings of my subconscious?  I saw the expanse as if through a camera lens, adjusting the depth of field and allowing the autofocus to confuse itself between the darkness of the storm on the horizon, and the white of the calilily in the foreground.

I could write a six page philosophy about life and tie it to photography any day of the week.  I'm a master of babble (suck it Mumford and Sons!)  Not so surprisingly, I frequently think of at least a dozen philosophy of photography posts to write about simply while running through my facebook feed, or perusing the headlines every morning.  Granted, I would probably get off a wee bit off topic and at some fateful moment, wander back into the oblivion of a "point" before, oddly exhausted and satisfied, click "Publish," lean back onto the couch and sigh... before then going back to re-read and edit the post six times to make it worthy of linking to Facebook and Twitter.

Hiking in the woods of the South Carolina Foothills, Thanksgiving 2011. © Heather Cortright 2011.

Lately, I've been trying to limit my blog posts to something more essential, and, because life has been batch after batch of lemonade in the last few months, it's been difficult to focus outside of my own struggles with this whole "positive attitude perspective."  It's not that I've allowed purple dinosaurs to take up residence in my brain, with singing Koom-bye-ah and holding hands and hugging trees and whatnot; it's just that life is a little easier to pursue when I'm finding the silver linings, and being happy with the simplicities that make every day a little easier.  The less-is-more concept.  So every morning, when I get angry reading the ignorance and close-minded posts of my peers, when I'm forced to change the passwords of my e-mail accounts, and monitor my bank accounts because some bored selfish computer nerd in Romania decided to invest time in breaking into my computer so they could spam my friends and family, I start to rant, imagining a post stretching into a rambling abyss, angry at the world for it's idiocy, etc.

The eye falls on the brightest part of an image.  Rites of Passage Ceremony, Fort Knox, KY, July 2011.

Then I have to calm myself down.  I have to focus on the good things, letting my depth of field slip outside of the limited range of negative space, and refocus on the beautiful detail in the bigger picture.  Readjusting the aperture to let the negative space blur.  See, one of the beautiful things about photography is that you can control where the eye falls.  You can decide, as the photographer, what the focal point of the image is.  In my dream, I could have picked up the tripod, moved it a foot to the left, eliminating the flower from the frame, and focus a long depth of field on the approaching clouds.  Or, I could shorten the depth of field, allowing the haunting light of a wide aperture illuminate the bud, the darkness blurring into a beautiful contrast behind it.  Or, even still, I could set up a fill flash on the white petals, close up the aperture, and click the shutter, capturing this gorgeous scene of a single soldier of nature, standing out before a horrific tempest.  In the latter option, it doesn't matter that the entire shot is in focus.  The f/22 stop would give the viewer all of the information necessary to take in the whole story, yes, but still, the eye falls to the light part of the image.  It's a rule of visual communications.  A light spot surrounded by a dark contrast will be the focal point of the image.  Our eye, with the big, dark, looming negativity in sight, will find the lily to be the most important piece of information.

And, that, friends, is why photography is so beautiful.  It illuminates the human nature in us to withstand the cold.  To focus on the positive space, even amidst the storm.