Using Photoshop Elements to Create Photo Effects

One nice feature about Photoshop Elements 7 is that it gives everyone the chance to become an artist – even those of us who wouldn’t be able to manage much more than stick figures and smiley faces if handed a sketch pad and colored pencils. Instead of trying to draw a picture from scratch, we can use Photoshop Elements to take an existing photo and turn it into a cartoon, a black and white sketch, or many other types of drawings.

Most of these photo-to-drawing conversions are actually fairly simple in nature. The real trick is in figuring out which filter or tool you need to use to achieve the desired photo effect. We’ll take a look at some of the easiest and most popular ways to transform a photo into different types of drawings using the features found in Photoshop Elements 7.

The Cartoon or Comic Book Look

There are quite a few different approaches you can take when trying to turn a digital photo into an image that resembles a cartoon or comic book frame, but the easiest of these methods involves using one of two artistic filters found in Photoshop Elements. To access these filters, select Filter Gallery from the Filter menu and expand the Artistic folder.

Both the Cutout and the Poster Edges filters have a “cartoonish appearance”, but the Poster Edges filter allows for the creation of more pronounced edges, which generally makes it more suitable for obtaining a comic book effect. If you really want to see some stunning results, try applying each effect separately to the original photo on different layers and then modify the opacity of the top layer so that both effects blend together.

Color Pencil Sketches

If you’re more interested in creating a sketch-like image, Photoshop Elements has a Colored Pencil filter that is also located in the Artistic folder.

It may take some practice to learn how to manipulate all of the settings so that you get the best results from this particular filter. However, here is one trick that may save a little frustration. If you notice some splotchy patches in the image when you first select the filter, try increasing the Paper Brightness setting to its maximum level first and then experiment with the other settings. Then, when you find values that you like for the other settings, ease the Paper Brightness down a little at a time until you’re happy with the final result.

Black and White Pencil and Charcoal Sketches

Although there are some effects in Photoshop Elements that allow you to convert a color photo to black and white as part of the filtering process, it’s usually a better idea to handle these two tasks separately. That is, if you have a color photo that you want to transform into a black and white sketch, it’s generally best to first convert the photo to black and white and then apply the Colored Pencil filter. You can convert a color image to black and white by selecting the appropriate option from the Enhance menu.

Instead of using the Colored Pencil filter after making the conversion to black and white, you may want to try some of the other filters found in the Sketch folder of the Filter Gallery. Although the performance of many of these filters is dependent on the content of the original image, they often give spectacular results. In particular, be sure to try out the Charcoal filter sometime just so you can see how closely it mimics a real charcoal drawing.

Posterization

Another tool that you may want to use when trying to achieve a hand-drawn effect is posterization. A complete treatment of posterization is beyond the scope of this article, but basically this tool limits the number of colors that appear in an image so that changes in tone are more abrupt and noticeable – just like in a sketch or comic. To access this feature, select Adjustments from the Filter menu and then choose Posterize.

When the Posterize dialog box appears, make sure there is a check in the box next to Preview and then change the number of Levels until you like the final result. A lower Levels value will result in an image with fewer colors and less blending, making the photo appear more cartoonish.