Cartooning Photos

One of my New Year's goals was to learn to CARTOON.  I've updated this post a year later after my family LOVED being cartooned.  I did the above cartoon this summer, 2013 for my daughter's SHARK birthday party.

If you are REALLY interested, keep reading all the way down to the bottom.  The directions are below the blond in the pink shirt. The very last hint below the lady in green is my favorite thing I've learned.

 Below are two of the original before they were cleaned up to get the black removed.  Now I know that if you use the erase button in Photoshop, along with the shift key, you can create straight lines.  Small straight lines around a shape help let you outline shapes.

 Above is my husband's head on a clip art body.

                       I made paper dolls of my daughter's friends in bathing suits.  Then made them into a roulette board for last summer's beach party.  Since I had all of their heads, when they came for Easter, of course I just HAD (ha ha) to put them into Easter outfits.

 First I'll show you Aunt Lois, who just loved her big blue hat.  Then look below for the whole family.

  Of course, once I put the original one up on Facebook, I got lots of responses from everyone wanting me to either change their outfit or sending me an updated head shot to cartoon.  If you think it's easy finding clipart clothes, it's NOT.  I now have a picture file labelled Clothes.  Below is my son in his blue jeans and jacket.

                                     Above is my niece Erin in her "relaxed" outfit.

 I'm still using the head my interior designer daughter created for my blog.  I just love playing with paper dolls.

  The Patty's below were my first attempts.  If you are reading this post for the first time, see the link below for what I did with the cartooned friends when I went to Disney World with them.  Click on this link.   Disney Photo Transfer T-Shirt

     My daughter does this in Illustrator.  I only have Photoshop.  So I spent all morning trying to learn how to do this.  I copied directions.  I watched Youtube videos.  I got totally frustrated.  But...I am learning. 
    The hardest thing seemed to be getting rid of the background.  My other daughter, who uses Photoshop a lot, tried to teach me to mask and delete.  TOO HARD.  Lots of the directions said to use the "pen" tool and outline the character.  Try this before you follow the steps I ended up with.
       Remember--we are still practicing.

1.     Open a photo from your pictures file.

2.    Duplicate the layer.  (You don't want to play around with the original photo)

3.    Rename this new layer "Sketch"

4.    You want to CUTOUT THE BACKGROUND.  I used the polygon lasso tool (under the 
       dotted box) that looks like a mask. I used the magnifying glass to make the picture 
       larger.  I also dragged the canvas sides to make it larger. Then I  started clicking with
      the lasso tool in small segments around the photo of the person I wanted to cartoon.
      Once I reached the end of the loop, I double clicked to lock the loop.
5.   Then I turned the origninal background layer's eye off. 

6.  Then I went to top menu to SELECT and hit INVERSE.  That selects the
      background instead of the image you lassoed.  Then I just hit DELETE...and  
    Cntrl D to turn off the dots.  Make sure you make a DUPLICATE of this layer to
      work with.

4.  Go to the COLOR DODGE.  Under your layers drop down box on the side, curser
      down to find this.

5.  Hit Control I on your keyboard.  It will change the photo to white.  You almost 
     can't see it.  That's okay.

6.  Under FILTER on top bar menu, go to BLUR--then Gaussian blur. (Very important).  This turns the photo bluish.  Change the bar on this screen to 7.0

7.  Go to LAYER on top menu bar.  Choose NEW ADJUSTMENT.  Choose 
    THRESHOLD.  Hit OKAY.  Another pop up box appears.  Change numbers
      in it to 234.

8.  Go back to top menu bar.  Go to LAYER--NEW--MODE--Multiple.
     (The multiple lets you color over the black lines, like a water color.

9.  Go to your PAINT BRUSH tool.  Choose colors to fill in the outlines.  Use the
     magnifying glass to enlarge the cartoon, so that it's easier to fill in. 

Now...if you practice this and it works, play around and see how good you can get. 
Save the result as BOTH a jpeg AND a photoshop extension.  You can go over and repair the photo while it is a jpeg by recoloring.  See next blog for instructions.
I have since learned that in Photoshop, you can hit the shift key along with the eraser toolor drawing tool to stay in a straight line.  Click on the tool, put the cursor where you want to start erasing, then hit the shift key.  Keep it held down while you move the mouse along the edge of the clipart.  I LOVE this hint.