Creating comic book effects in Photoshop is such a great technique to learn as it can bring life into stock imagery, help tell a story in an interesting way, and bring a new visual dimension to your online content. There are so many different ways of creating a comic book effect like this one. But I think that this technique I am about to show you is one of the best recipes for how to create a comic book effect in Photoshop. The best thing about this technique is that it is non-destructive. This means once you have followed this tutorial you can just switch out your image in a few clicks and have another ready-to-go comic book panel all finished up. This is the professional way to create a comic book effect within Photoshop without needing to be an artist.
I made the below image in ten minutes, just browsing Pexels for interesting-looking images and putting them through the Smart Object that is built in this Design School tutorial. If this doesn’t make you want to make a Comic Book in Photoshop I don’t know what will!
If you don’t have a copy of Photoshop, then grab one here. You can get a free trial also!
If you want a deeper look at Smart Objects before you begin this tutorial then we have a guide that you can read here.
Step One: Create a New Photoshop Document
CTRL-N to bring up the dialogue to create a new document, put in Width 3000px, Height 2000px, Resolution 300DPI. You can make this size anything you like, but we will go with these numbers for now as it gives a high-quality result that works well with photos from Pexels.
Step Two: Create a Smart Object
I want this Comic Book effect to be really easy to change, meaning that we can grab any photo we like and just paste it in and it will automatically turn into a Comic Book image without us needing to do much. This is my favorite way of setting up a Photoshop document, put some work upfront to build it, and then it becomes very fast to use later on. Let’s make the Smart Object which will enable us to do this.
Create a new layer by pressing CTRL-J. Press G to activate the Fill Tool and fill this layer with a solid color. It doesn’t matter what the color is as we will switch it out for a photo soon. Right-click this layer and select Convert to Smart Object.
Double click the thumbnail of this layer in the Layers Panel. This will open up a new PSD. Drag in a photo to this new PSD, resize it with CTRL-T so that it fills the frame. I am using this image from Pexels, so you can download it if you like. CTRL-S to save this PSD. Return to your main Photoshop document to see that the photo has now appeared here.
Step Three: Oil Paint Filter
I think that the Filters section of Photoshop is under-explored with the types of effects that it is possible to create by layering them up. We will be layering several filters onto our Smart Object that will create a foundation for our Comic Book effect. Another great thing with using a Smart Object is that you can add a filter of any kind and see it listed below the layer. You can go back in and change its settings anytime you wish. Or even turn the filter on and off. It’s a really great way to use Non-Destructive editing – which is a professional way of working within Graphic Design.
At the top of Photoshop go to Filter > Stylize > Oil Paint. Enter these values:
Stylization: 5.0
Cleanliness: 3.0
Scale: 0.1
Bristle Detail: 0.0
Press ok to commit these changes.
Step Four: Cutout Filter
Now go to Filter > Filter Gallery > from the drop-down select Cutout filter. And enter these values:
Number of Levels: 8
Edge Simplicity: 0
Edge Fidelity: 3
Press OK to commit these values.
Step Five: Surface Blur
Go to Filter > Blue > Surface Blur to add a blur across your image. Enter these Values:
Radius: 40
Threshold: 20
Step Six: Halftone
It is possible to create some really interesting halftone effects within Photoshop by layering up halftone filters. In future tutorials, I will show you exactly how to do this. But for now, go to Filter > Pixalate > Color Halftone
Max Radius: 6
Channel 1: 108
Channel 2: 162
Channel 3: 90
Channel 4: 45
Step Seven: Adjustment Layers
We are going to add two adjustment layers which will help lighten up our image and also boost the saturation a little. At this stage, it might look a little odd but don’t worry. Once we layer on a black and white version in a few steps time this will start looking like a Comic Book image!
The first adjustment layer we are going to add is a Levels. This is to decrease the contrast in the image, it will flatten out the colors a little.
At the bottom of the Layers Panel, click the Layer Adjustment Icon and select Levels. When it appears, double click it’s thumbnail in the Layers Panel to open the Properties window.
In the RGB channel we are just going to move the triangle that is pointing to the black gradient to the right, about a third of the way down the gradient.
Next from the Adjustment Layers icon on the bottom of the Layers Panel, select Hue/Saturation. Double click into the icon to open the Properties window. This one is really easy. Just type in the value of 20 into the Saturation section.
Step Eight: Duplicate the Smart Object
It’s time to build the black and white part of the image that will sit on top of our color layer below. It’s actually fairly straightforward to do so in that we just duplicate the Smart Object and adjust our filters a little. Let’s take a look.
To start with we will want to duplicate our Smart Object – Select the layer and then press CTRL-J to duplicate it. Rename this layer to ‘Lines’
Select the filters that are listed under this layer and delete them by dragging them to the Bin icon in the Layers Panel. We are going to want to put different filters here to create a new effect.
Step Nine: Poster Edges Filter
The Poster Edges filter helps give us the texture that we need, you might also notice it gives us comic book style line work also.
Go to Filter > Filter Gallery and then choose Poster Edges from the drop-down list. Enter the values below:
Edge Thickness: 5
Edge Intensity: 1
Posterization: 2
Hit Ok.
Step Ten: Threshold
Threshold will turn our image black and white and pick out a lot of fine details. If you are looking at creating black and white comics rather than color then these next few steps could be a good option for you to try out.
To add a Threshold adjustment do the following.
Image > Adjustments > Threshold
Add the values: 70
If we did this to a layer that was not a Smart Object it would be locked in and we wouldn’t be able to change it later on. But because we are working with Smart Objects it means that we are working non-destructively and can change our values whenever we want.
Step Eleven: Oil Paint Filter
Adding an Oil Paint Filter stretches out those lines and marks that Threshold gave us. It helps to create the illusion of Pen Strokes that you would find in hand-drawn comics. But you will see that this effect, although cool, is a little too much. But don’t worry we will dial it back in a future step.
Filter > Stylize > Oil Paint
Then add the values:
Stylization: 5.0
Cleanliness: 3.0
Scale: 0.1
Bristle Detail: 0
Step Twelve: Levels
As I mentioned above, the level of detail we have on our linework is too much. We need to dial it back so that we just have linework appearing in the darker areas of our image. To do this we will make a Levels Adjustment Layer that will push the contrast of the layer below it to lessen the detail in the bright areas.
At the bottom of the Layers Panel, you will see an icon that creates Adjustment Layers, click this and add a Levels Adjustment Layer.
Double click its thumbnail to open the Properties Panel. In the top graph, we see three triangle points. We need to push all three towards the center. Take a look at the image below to see how I have it.
Step Thirteen: Multiply
The final step in our Comic Book Tutorial. Select the black and white layer and set it’s Blend Mode to Multiply. It is now layered over the color layer below it.
To change the image, just double click into the image thumbnail in the Layers Panel. This will open up another PSD which you can drag any image you like into. Just CTRL-S to save this PSD everytime you put a new image into it. When you save it, it will automatically update your current PSD and apply all of the effects we just setup.
So you can now create all sorts of Comic Book images really quickly. Have a play with some of the values and see what other effects you can achieve with this effect.
I would love to see what Comic you create with this effect!
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