Theres a few times that Im using Photoshop Elements that I think I wish this was in Photoshop!. The Graphic Novel filter is one these.
The Graphic Novel Filter
With an image loaded head to the Filter menu. Under the Sketch menu theres a few filters, one of these is the Graphic Novel filter;
Choose Your Starting Point
When you first open the Graphic Novel filter it can be a little disappointing, a fuzzy monotone oddness, but its worth clicking on the four presets here to get an understanding of what its doing and to pick something that looks something like youre after;
The Sliders
Darkness : As the name suggests this alters the darkness of the image, from all white to all black. In my image here Im going to reduce it a little so that I loose some of the detail in the sky. Like all the sliders here though, Ill be returning to it later as one will effect the others.
Clean Look : Again, a very descriptive title for a slider. This slider will pick out some of the finer details of an image. Having it up, as I have here, will make the image more basic.
Contrast : In essence this slider will add more shades of grey as you move it to the left.
Thickness : Adding thickness to the image simplifies it, but adds more detail at times too. Striking a good balance here will alter the look of your image quite drastically. Once you adjust this slider you’ll probably want to return to the others to fine tune
Smoothness : This adds a degree of Gaussian Blur to the lines, you can add this twice should you wish.
Take A Closer Look
Im quite happy with the look of this image but its worth taking a closer look. At the bottom left I have several tools I can use to do this, zooming in, out and using the hand tool to move around.
Next to these are two very helpful icons. 1:1 will show the image at 100% while the one next to it will fit the image into the preview window.
To zoom to 100% you can use the keyboard shortcut of ctrl+1 (PC) or Cmd+1 (Mac)
As you can see theres a lot more detail, and some lovely pen like strokes happening in the image that I couldn’t see while zoomed out.
Ill tweak the sliders here again before clicking OK to finish;
Why Not Try..
Duplicating the layer and running the Graphic Pen filter then changing its blending modes;
It seems that Adobe has taken this away from the latest Photoshop Elements Do you know how to get these back or as a plugin download?