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;