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Adobe Illustrator and/or Macromedia Flash may be the preferred tools of choice for serious artists wishing to make professional-quality animations, but this does not mean that simple single-frame cel-shading effects are impossible in Adobe Photoshop.   This tutorial describes a very simple technique for creating images with cartoon-style effects using nothing more than a photograph and the basic Photoshop tools. The end result is as impressive as it is simple!
 

Step 1: Open up a stock image in Photoshop of any size and/or format. The best results for this tutorial usually involve images with large areas of bright colours and a distinct lack of tiny details. This does not, of course, exclude detailed images, but cartoons are never particularly known for fine detailing, and the final result may not look as intended if fine details are present in the source image. NB.  Many thanks go to WickedLady for the allowing the use of this photograph.

Step 2: With the background layer selected in the layers palette, choose Filter > Artistic > Cutout from the main menu and enter in settings which give you the best results.  There is a great deal of judgement needed in this step, and the settings will change on an image-by-image basis. On my 1028 by 768 pixel image I used the  following settings: Number of levels: 7 Edge Simplicity: 5 Edge Fidelity: 2 Press OK, and then duplicate the layer with Layer > Duplicate Layer.

Step 3:  Using your mouse, select the top/duplicated layer in the layers palette and run Filter > Stylize > Find Edges.  Set the blending mode to multiply... or play around a bit with other settings.  Overlay, Darken, and Color Burn create some interestingly different results.  Drop the layer opacity to around 80%.

Step 4: And its really that simple!   You should now go back to the original (background) layer and adjust the colours using Image > Adjustments > Brightness & Contrast to achieve a cleaner brighter feel with the underlying colours. Note:   If at this stage your image is exhibiting areas of overly bright or dark colour, you should ideally select Edit > Adjustments > Levels and adjust the levels until the result is more to your liking. Simply altering the brightness of the image via Image > Adjustments > Brightness /Contrast will not remove the differences in overall contrast.

- Tutorial written by Man1c M0g

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