The Art of Digital Photo Retouching

The Limits of Photo Cameras

We live in an age of amazing technological advancements in the visual technology fields. Photo camera models renew themselves each year with the promise of more mega-pixels and new features. And yet, if we think about it for a moment, the photo that comes out of each of our digital camera models most times has strengths and weaknesses that persist through all the successive models that go through our hands.

Digital Cameras and in general all photographic cameras are, despite all of the marketing buzz, still very limited machines. For example, they register our world with sensors that can only capture a fraction of the tonal range that our eyes can perceive.

Imagine yourself on a sunny day in front of a beautiful landscape.

Below you, around your feet, you can see the rich lush green vegetation; above you, the bright blue skies. As we contemplate this scene, our eyes are able to perceive all its richness, the details in both the shadows and the bright clouds above. The dynamic range that our eyes can process, which goes from the darkest to the brightest areas, is enough to contain most of the rich detail in that scene.

Now take your photo camera and snap a shot from your position including both the vegetation and the sky. The result is very telling. Depending on the parameters that either the camera or you choose, some detail of the scene will be gone from the result. Either parts of the vegetation will blend to black and lose all detail or parts of the sky will blend to white and lose all detail.

In summary, the retina of the camera, its digital sensor, which captures the light of the scene, is not capable of dealing with a tonal range as large as our eyes can. It can only capture the full detail in a small range that can be positioned at different levels of brightness by the camera itself or us. Because of that, in a scene like the one described above that has a very large contrast, it ends up capturing the detail only at the highlights and mid-tones, or mainly at the mid-tones, or mainly at the shadows and mid-tones. It simply cannot capture simultaneously the full detail of the scene from the darkest to the brightest areas.

This is of course a simplification of an scenario that we could describe in much more detail. But the conclusion is still the same. When we look at the final photo, we realize that what we remember seeing with our eyes is not what the photo shows. That richness of detail everywhere is gone. And this is just one of the limitations that all Photo cameras share. We could go on to describe many others related to color precision and other areas where cameras simply cannot cope with the depth and richness of the world around us.

Photo Retouching comes to the rescue

Here is where photo retouching enters the scene. So what really is photo retouching and what is it useful for? We can approach this question from two angles and both are related to each other:

Bringing the Photo closer to what we remember

1) On the one hand, photo retouching is the art of taking that initial photo and working on it by various means to bring it closer to what our eyes saw when we were in front of that beautiful scene.

Photo retouching applied to the scenario described above is, for example, the art of manipulating the image we captured and making more visible some of the details that almost disappeared due to the limitations of our photo camera. It enables us as well to enhance the color of the picture and bring it closer to what our eyes enjoyed. In short, retouching allows us to take the photo and compensate for the limitations of our camera. It gives us the possibility to try and bring the final result as close as possible to what we remember.

Two key points here:

a) First, retouching is not synonymous with Photoshop. Photoshop is the most popular of the tools used in our digital age to retouch photographs. But retouching can be done in numerous ways, either with the many software products available on the market or by processing the digital outputs in other ways (such as printing and scanning the photo successive times including physical interventions in the middle to alter different properties of the image).

b) The second point is that when we talk about - what we remember from the scene - we have to take into account the psychological implications of that statement. It has been shown that often when we remember a beautiful nature landscape, we remember it greener and more saturated in color than it really was.

Therefore, when we retouch that photo, should we manipulate the output to approach what we remember from the scene, or what the scene truly looks like when we stand in front of it?

But no one can possibly say what the scene truly looks like. For each of us, the experience of looking at something will be completely different. Furthermore, what we remember from our visual connection with the scene will also be different for each of us as vision is truly relative. (let's remember the example of the person who is enclosed in a room painted completely red and with nothing else inside to compare that color to. The person will be unable to see that red color until we introduce something with which he can compare it).

So, if we are retouching a picture for ourselves, we will attempt to bring that image closer to what we remember based on our own personal experience. If we are retouching it for somebody else, we may either bring that scene closer to what generally is accepted as attractive for such a scenario or we may ask the client whose photo we are retouching the details of his/her perception of that scene and then manipulate the result towards that direction.

Moving Beyond what we see

2) On the other hand, retouching allows us to go beyond the first point and enhance reality in infinite directions. As we mentioned previously, vision is very relative. We all remember the same scene in different ways. That lush green vegetation will be remembered by some of us as more saturated in color than by others, some will remember it more yellow and others greener. Some will remember the vegetation to be brighter and others darker; some will even remember it larger and others smaller. This is all a consequence both of the biology of our eyes and of the continuous filtering that our brain performs on our perception of the world around us.

Depending on the importance and resonance that our different memories have on us, the brain will remember different scenarios in different ways. Therefore we can summarize by saying that once we leave a scene, its representation in our minds starts to get distorted. What we remember is a mixture of the filtering and processing performed by our brain plus how our mind wants to remember that input. All in all, most times what we remember has little to do with the actual physical input we had in front of us.

This very same human trait that at first may sound a bit disturbing is also what powers our imagination and our capacity to invent, to create, to expand beyond what we see. It allows us to blend, interconnect, associate and produce ideas and images that we have never seen in real life.

And here is where retouching again becomes an extremely powerful tool. Not only can we start from that initial photo we snapped with our camera and take control of the distortion that happens naturally in our minds, but this time we can modify the image consciously in whatever directions our imagination suggests.

We can make a blue shirt red. We can expand that forest of trees and make it five times larger. We can put an ocean around our house or extract a figure from its background and make it fly through the skies. The possibilities are endless. As such, from this second perspective, retouching becomes a wonderful way of visually imagining, exploring, creating and expanding ideas.

The art of retouching, described from these two angles, is an art-form that requires conscious thought and decision-making strategies. We have to decide what parts of the picture we will work on and what style of retouching we will perform. Will it be retouching that will go unnoticed and simply enhance the picture without calling attention to itself? Or will it be retouching that aims to transform the image into something completely out of our imagination and therefore will aim to look surprising and new in an elegant way?

A professional photo retoucher works with the image like a craftsman. He must work carefully with his electronic brush, repairing, correcting, blending and transforming the image in subtle ways that slowly change it just as a sunset or a sunrise slowly transition into a new reality without sudden changes that could call attention to themselves. As such, the work of a professional photo retoucher is similar to the work of a painter, a sculptor or an illustrator.

Precision work full of creativity and focus that aims to do what our photo cameras could not do; Enhance and transform the photo closer to what our eyes enjoyed and our minds remember.

Retouching can cover an infinite array of treatments including basic color correction, high end beauty retouching, skin retouching, make-up enhancement, glamour retouching, lighting enhancement, photo montages, portrait retouching, eyes retouching, photo illustration, photo restoration and touch up, magazine photo retouching, photo cartooning, background extractions, damaged photos restoration, wedding photography retouching, panoramic photography, photo paintings, other special effects and so much more.

Some online services offer minimal automated basic retouching services like automatic color and contrast enhancements. These perform generic automated corrections to an image and fail to produce optimum results for the same reason that all automated processes in life fail to adapt to the unique individual circumstances of a subject, in our case an image.

Every picture is a different world. Automated processes can improve the contrast and color of an image sometimes, but other times they can degrade the image instead of improving it, taking the image in the opposite direction needed by blindly following theoretical rules and mechanical algorithms.

And what is even more important, automated processes cannot think and cannot create a strategy of what they want to achieve. They cannot contemplate an image and create a plan to bring it closer to what our human eyes would enjoy or to the dreams that our souls envision.

That is why the best retouching can only be done by humans, by artists, by creatives, by truly, magicians that with their electronic wands work for hours and days on the pictures and create results that sometimes reflect our memories and other times transform our dreams into realities, as real for our eyes as what we remembered but even better, taken to the edges and peaks of human creativity and beauty.

Javier Gonzalez is creative director of http://www.klinklin.com

KlinKlin's mission is to bring the magic of Professional Photo Retouching to the photos of our lives - the everyday photos that we take with our cameras, and to do so in a fast and affordable way.

With KlinKlin, you can be on the cover of a magazine or on a movie poster, you can appear in a photo illustration or a cartoon, be virtually transported to new backgrounds and places and receive make-up and skin treatments of the highest quality; The possibilities are endless with the different services we offer.

We offer Beauty Photo Retouching, photo repair, picture editing and photo enhancement services that transform your photos into shining keepsake to be shared with your loved ones, friends and family.

Join now for free at http://www.klinklin.com

KlinKlin

The Top Photo Editing Software Is Still Photoshop

Over time since Photoshop initially became available, several different companies have attempted to make photo editing software to contend with it, however, pretty much all have failed. Microsoft even tried bundling Corel with all the PCs it was selling and even that didn't work. Individuals who purchased those personal computers still acquired and mounted Photoshop and would either uninstall the Corel or just never use it again. Photo editing software just does not get much better than Photoshop. Regardless if you are a novice only trying to make your Facebook pictures look better or a professional photographer you'll appreciate all to the impressive stuff that Photoshop can do.

With all the digital cameras available around the world in these days, downloading images directly into Photoshop has totally replaced scanning, sending scanner sales and prices falling. So, who needs a scanner when there aren't any hard copy prints anymore? The days are gone of driving to the store and dropping off your roll of film to be processed. Even pros who had their own darkroom are now able to digitally download photos right from their very costly, high-end digital SLRs. No more working in the dark with poisonous chemicals and messing with paper prints. A lot of printers offered today can print high-resolution images straight onto photo paper in various sizes so all the user needs to do is download the images straight from their digital camera to the photo editing software, adjust the levels, then print out the digitally retouched photo. What a time saver!

The photo editing software that you obtain when you buy Photoshop is second to none when it comes to various stuff that you can do to your photos. Most people will never use the advanced functions of Photoshop like learning how to mathematically alter the curves so the image is retouched to Art Director specs, but it is nice to know you could if you need to.

Designers and Graphic Artists love Photoshop as it is the easiest to use digital tool in making drop dead gorgeous collages and photo illustrations. There are some outstanding artists using Photoshop as their canvas and creating awe inspiring works of art. Galleries all over the world right now feature the work of these modern-day artists who earn a living manipulating pictures in Photoshop.

The fundamental concept of Photoshop is the fact that you can use it to improve or add to a genuine picture. In the same manner, Photoshop can be used to add things such as color or light. Photo editing software such as Photoshop enables you to use Filters in order to retouch and modify existing photographs and illustrations. You can run a photograph through one of these digital filters, such as Brush Strokes, or Charcoal and the end result will look like a brush stroked painting or even a charcoal drawing. You can also make photos negative or polarize them. You can saturate colors or improve colors completely. Pretty much anything you want to do can be done in Photoshop, the world's best photo editing software.

There are so many websites that offer various forms of advice on how to use Green Screen Background but most of them are not very detailed or specific. Make sure to check out my own reviews and posts on all you need to learn about Green Screen before following other advice.

Turning a Photo into Lichtenstein Style Pop Art with Illustrator

Roy Lichtenstein’s pop art comic book images are as familiar now as they were in the 1960's. They demonstrate a stylized way of presenting a photo of yourself or anything else you can think of. Using Illustrator’s custom brushes and swatches, we’ll be recreating a Lichtenstein style of effect in this intermediate level tutorial.

Republished Tutorial

Every few weeks, we revisit some of our reader's favorite posts from throughout the history of the site. This tutorial was first published in August of 2008.

The image below is what we’ll be working towards.

These comic book images recreated a printing process using what became known as Ben-day dots. Equally spaced and sized dots in the four printing colors were layered to produce other shades. In any case, the effect was best put to use with limited colors so we’re going to put together a palette of only seven swatches plus black and white.

Drag the following colors (here shown in hex-values) from the color panel into the Swatches panel.

#FCE354 – Hair#E27D89 – Lips#E04359 – Tongue#2489ED – Eyes#FF8048 – Blouse #000000 – Black#FFFFFF – White

Double-click on the swatches once in the Swatches panel and name them accordingly.

We need to complete our palette by adding the two Ben-day dots patterns. These will fill the background and the skin. Illustrator offers hundreds of patterns, but building your own gives you huge freedom. These simple dots are a perfect way to learn.

Begin by selecting both View > Show Grid and View > Snap to Grid from the top menu. These options will make it easier to be precise when creating our patterns.

Using the Ellipse Tool, draw five perfect circles of equal sizes. Then position them on your grid, as shown below (with the Snap to Grid turned on you should manage this with your eyes closed!)

These dots form the basis for our pattern, but to ensure that they tessellate (tile) properly, we need to define the edges of what will become the swatch.

Draw a square following the darker line of the grid, intersecting the center of your four outer circles. Ensure the square has no fill color and no stroke color, then right-click it, and send it to the back of your tile objects.

Illustrator will recognize this object as the area to be repeated, anything which falls outside (such as three quarters of each of the outer circles) will not be included in the pattern.

Select your transparent square, copy, and then paste it in place (Edit > Copy, Edit > Paste in Front). Give this copy a color of #4EACF9 and then color the dots #ABE0F4. Duplicate the whole thing, color it #F2C8BF, and color the dots #D3A09B. Select the objects of each one and group them (Object > Group), making two separate groups.

Note: These colors don’t represent true CMYK printing values, but create a nice effect so we’ll just put that down to artistic license.

Before we add these two groups of objects to the Swatches panel, we’ll scale them a little. Select them both and choose Objects > Transform > Scale from the top menu. Give them a uniform value of 15% and click OK.

Just as you dragged colors, you can now drag each of the tile groups into the Swatches panel instantly turning them into pattern swatches. Double click each one and assign them names of ‘Background’ and ‘Skin’. I’ll let you work out which one’s which.

Go to View in the top menu, turn off Snap to Grid, and select Hide Grid to return to the original drawing settings.

Anything can be drawn to emulate Lichtenstein’s comic book style, though typically his were scenes of domesticity and consumerism. An image of a surprised woman could represent a troubled business woman or shocked mother. So, I chose this image from dreamstime.com.

Open your image in Illustrator, lock the layer it’s on, then make a new layer on which to begin your drawing.

Using the Pen Tool, draw basic areas to form the colored parts of the drawing. While doing this, you may find it easier to draw shapes with just a brightly colored stroke to avoid hiding parts of the photo while you’re using them. You probably have your own preferred method of working here.

Use smooth rounded lines and don’t be afraid to exaggerate certain features: like the mouth, wavy hair, wide surprised eyes. We’re creating a comic image here after all.

See how the mouth is built from just four simple shapes. The teeth are absurdly rounded as is the tongue, but it gives us the effect we want.

Using the swatches, fill each of the main shapes you’ve drawn. The labels given to the swatches should make this a simple task; just select the object you wish to fill, and click on your swatch. She looks kind of funny so far, but we’ll keep working on it.

We need a brush to give us the black marker pen strokes which define our images features. Draw an Ellipse on your artboard. Then using the Direct Selection Tool, reduce the handle size on either end. This gives you a pointy ellipse which we’ll use as a brush.

Drag your form into the Brushes panel. In the dialogue that appears select New Art Brush and click OK. In the following Art Brush Options dialogue give this brush a name if you wish and click OK. The Illustrator default values are fine for our needs here.

We now have a layer for our image and a layer for our filled objects. Make the objects layer invisible and create a third one, which we’ll be drawing our black strokes with.

Using the Pen Tool draw a series of curves for each of the elements of our subject’s face. Once drawn, keep the vector selected and choose your custom brush from the Brushes panel. In the Stroke panel change the weight of each line depending on the emphasis needed (for example, the eyelid is a little heavier than the line under the eye, and the eyebrow is heavier still).

It doesn’t take a great amount of detail to create what looks like a convincing eye. It does, however, take a bit of practice. You can get away with making certain aspects larger, more pronounced – such as the eyebrow here, but be careful not to make it too Mickey Mouse.

As you can see, I also lowered the eye slightly to improve the overall look of the face. These decisions are entirely up to your artistic discretion.

I’d exaggerated the shape of the mouth so much that tracing the photo was no longer appropriate. Make a copy of the mouth and paste it onto your Strokes layer. In the same way as you did around the eyes, draw a series of curved vectors using the Pen Tool, and alter the line to your custom made brush. Just five strokes around the mouth will be enough to make it stand out.

Again with her nose, you’ll need only a couple of strokes to finish it off, as too many lines will add years to her.

Continue to outline your objects, some with a normal stroke, some with your custom brush, until you’re satisfied with the result. Make your Objects layer visible and see how it all looks together.

Now you may have to start to alter the order in which objects and strokes are organized; send some strokes back and some objects forward depending on how it looks. Don’t worry too much about keeping things in the correct layers either.

Build some extra hair strands out of solid shapes and black strokes to finish layering her hair. Place them on top of the whole drawing so far.

Select everything you’ve drawn except for the blue background rectangle, make a copy (Edit > Copy) and paste in place (Edit > Paste in Front). Select the Combine tool in the Pathfinder panel to join it all together and then click Expand.

Give this object a nice heavy stroke and align the stroke to the outside of the vector, see image below. This gives our character a solid outline.

Build a caption bubble out of a series of ellipses by combining them together with the Pathfinder tool. Give your main bubble a heavier stroke than the smaller ones. Also, use a hand-written style font for the caption. I’ve used Tekton Pro, a font from Adobe, but you can use your discretion as to the font that fits your illustration best.

Group the caption objects (Object > Group) and place them somewhere on your drawing, even overlapping the edges, and the character.

To finish the comic book look, you’ll need to tidy the image up. Select everything (assuming your photo layer is still locked) and group together (Edit > Group). Draw a rectangle where you wish the edges of the illustration to be and then copy it to the clipboard (Edit > Copy).

Select the group of objects and your new rectangle and go to Object > Clipping Mask > Make.

Now paste your copied rectangle back onto the artboard (Edit > Paste in Front) and give it a heavy black stroke of uniform thickness. You have now masked your drawing and given it a comic book style frame.

You’ve completed your Lichtenstein style illustration! In doing so, I hope you’ve become familiar with making your own patterns and have brushed up on your vector drawing skills too. The final image is below.

Scaling patterns is an issue which needs to be mentioned before we wrap up. By scaling an object filled with a pattern you’ll by default increase the surface area of the object, but the pattern will remain at the same scale (in our case, we’d get more dots).

By going to Illustrator > Preferences > General you can change this should you wish to. You can turn on Transform Pattern Tiles, as shown below. You’ll now proportionally scale your pattern whenever you scale your object.

Alternatively, you could go to Object > Expand and turn your pattern into individual vectors, though in doing so you’d be sacrificing the flexibility Illustrator’s patterns offer you.

View the original article here

Turning a Photo into Lichtenstein Style Pop Art with Illustrator

Roy Lichtenstein’s pop art comic book images are as familiar now as they were in the 1960's. They demonstrate a stylized way of presenting a photo of yourself or anything else you can think of. Using Illustrator’s custom brushes and swatches, we’ll be recreating a Lichtenstein style of effect in this intermediate level tutorial.

Republished Tutorial

Every few weeks, we revisit some of our reader's favorite posts from throughout the history of the site. This tutorial was first published in August of 2008.

The image below is what we’ll be working towards.

These comic book images recreated a printing process using what became known as Ben-day dots. Equally spaced and sized dots in the four printing colors were layered to produce other shades. In any case, the effect was best put to use with limited colors so we’re going to put together a palette of only seven swatches plus black and white.

Drag the following colors (here shown in hex-values) from the color panel into the Swatches panel.

#FCE354 – Hair#E27D89 – Lips#E04359 – Tongue#2489ED – Eyes#FF8048 – Blouse #000000 – Black#FFFFFF – White

Double-click on the swatches once in the Swatches panel and name them accordingly.

We need to complete our palette by adding the two Ben-day dots patterns. These will fill the background and the skin. Illustrator offers hundreds of patterns, but building your own gives you huge freedom. These simple dots are a perfect way to learn.

Begin by selecting both View > Show Grid and View > Snap to Grid from the top menu. These options will make it easier to be precise when creating our patterns.

Using the Ellipse Tool, draw five perfect circles of equal sizes. Then position them on your grid, as shown below (with the Snap to Grid turned on you should manage this with your eyes closed!)

These dots form the basis for our pattern, but to ensure that they tessellate (tile) properly, we need to define the edges of what will become the swatch.

Draw a square following the darker line of the grid, intersecting the center of your four outer circles. Ensure the square has no fill color and no stroke color, then right-click it, and send it to the back of your tile objects.

Illustrator will recognize this object as the area to be repeated, anything which falls outside (such as three quarters of each of the outer circles) will not be included in the pattern.

Select your transparent square, copy, and then paste it in place (Edit > Copy, Edit > Paste in Front). Give this copy a color of #4EACF9 and then color the dots #ABE0F4. Duplicate the whole thing, color it #F2C8BF, and color the dots #D3A09B. Select the objects of each one and group them (Object > Group), making two separate groups.

Note: These colors don’t represent true CMYK printing values, but create a nice effect so we’ll just put that down to artistic license.

Before we add these two groups of objects to the Swatches panel, we’ll scale them a little. Select them both and choose Objects > Transform > Scale from the top menu. Give them a uniform value of 15% and click OK.

Just as you dragged colors, you can now drag each of the tile groups into the Swatches panel instantly turning them into pattern swatches. Double click each one and assign them names of ‘Background’ and ‘Skin’. I’ll let you work out which one’s which.

Go to View in the top menu, turn off Snap to Grid, and select Hide Grid to return to the original drawing settings.

Anything can be drawn to emulate Lichtenstein’s comic book style, though typically his were scenes of domesticity and consumerism. An image of a surprised woman could represent a troubled business woman or shocked mother. So, I chose this image from dreamstime.com.

Open your image in Illustrator, lock the layer it’s on, then make a new layer on which to begin your drawing.

Using the Pen Tool, draw basic areas to form the colored parts of the drawing. While doing this, you may find it easier to draw shapes with just a brightly colored stroke to avoid hiding parts of the photo while you’re using them. You probably have your own preferred method of working here.

Use smooth rounded lines and don’t be afraid to exaggerate certain features: like the mouth, wavy hair, wide surprised eyes. We’re creating a comic image here after all.

See how the mouth is built from just four simple shapes. The teeth are absurdly rounded as is the tongue, but it gives us the effect we want.

Using the swatches, fill each of the main shapes you’ve drawn. The labels given to the swatches should make this a simple task; just select the object you wish to fill, and click on your swatch. She looks kind of funny so far, but we’ll keep working on it.

We need a brush to give us the black marker pen strokes which define our images features. Draw an Ellipse on your artboard. Then using the Direct Selection Tool, reduce the handle size on either end. This gives you a pointy ellipse which we’ll use as a brush.

Drag your form into the Brushes panel. In the dialogue that appears select New Art Brush and click OK. In the following Art Brush Options dialogue give this brush a name if you wish and click OK. The Illustrator default values are fine for our needs here.

We now have a layer for our image and a layer for our filled objects. Make the objects layer invisible and create a third one, which we’ll be drawing our black strokes with.

Using the Pen Tool draw a series of curves for each of the elements of our subject’s face. Once drawn, keep the vector selected and choose your custom brush from the Brushes panel. In the Stroke panel change the weight of each line depending on the emphasis needed (for example, the eyelid is a little heavier than the line under the eye, and the eyebrow is heavier still).

It doesn’t take a great amount of detail to create what looks like a convincing eye. It does, however, take a bit of practice. You can get away with making certain aspects larger, more pronounced – such as the eyebrow here, but be careful not to make it too Mickey Mouse.

As you can see, I also lowered the eye slightly to improve the overall look of the face. These decisions are entirely up to your artistic discretion.

I’d exaggerated the shape of the mouth so much that tracing the photo was no longer appropriate. Make a copy of the mouth and paste it onto your Strokes layer. In the same way as you did around the eyes, draw a series of curved vectors using the Pen Tool, and alter the line to your custom made brush. Just five strokes around the mouth will be enough to make it stand out.

Again with her nose, you’ll need only a couple of strokes to finish it off, as too many lines will add years to her.

Continue to outline your objects, some with a normal stroke, some with your custom brush, until you’re satisfied with the result. Make your Objects layer visible and see how it all looks together.

Now you may have to start to alter the order in which objects and strokes are organized; send some strokes back and some objects forward depending on how it looks. Don’t worry too much about keeping things in the correct layers either.

Build some extra hair strands out of solid shapes and black strokes to finish layering her hair. Place them on top of the whole drawing so far.

Select everything you’ve drawn except for the blue background rectangle, make a copy (Edit > Copy) and paste in place (Edit > Paste in Front). Select the Combine tool in the Pathfinder panel to join it all together and then click Expand.

Give this object a nice heavy stroke and align the stroke to the outside of the vector, see image below. This gives our character a solid outline.

Build a caption bubble out of a series of ellipses by combining them together with the Pathfinder tool. Give your main bubble a heavier stroke than the smaller ones. Also, use a hand-written style font for the caption. I’ve used Tekton Pro, a font from Adobe, but you can use your discretion as to the font that fits your illustration best.

Group the caption objects (Object > Group) and place them somewhere on your drawing, even overlapping the edges, and the character.

To finish the comic book look, you’ll need to tidy the image up. Select everything (assuming your photo layer is still locked) and group together (Edit > Group). Draw a rectangle where you wish the edges of the illustration to be and then copy it to the clipboard (Edit > Copy).

Select the group of objects and your new rectangle and go to Object > Clipping Mask > Make.

Now paste your copied rectangle back onto the artboard (Edit > Paste in Front) and give it a heavy black stroke of uniform thickness. You have now masked your drawing and given it a comic book style frame.

You’ve completed your Lichtenstein style illustration! In doing so, I hope you’ve become familiar with making your own patterns and have brushed up on your vector drawing skills too. The final image is below.

Scaling patterns is an issue which needs to be mentioned before we wrap up. By scaling an object filled with a pattern you’ll by default increase the surface area of the object, but the pattern will remain at the same scale (in our case, we’d get more dots).

By going to Illustrator > Preferences > General you can change this should you wish to. You can turn on Transform Pattern Tiles, as shown below. You’ll now proportionally scale your pattern whenever you scale your object.

Alternatively, you could go to Object > Expand and turn your pattern into individual vectors, though in doing so you’d be sacrificing the flexibility Illustrator’s patterns offer you.

View the original article here