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Need help on how to convert photos to black and white drawings, Grunge style or alike


Skyes

Skyes

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Hello everybody . I do not know if this is the right section to ask for a tutorial, guide or help, but here it goes:
I am working on a comic with Grunge style in Photoshop , a short piece of art of 5 pages or so . The idea is to take some photos and pictures, and turns them into comics, applying effects in Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator. But no matter what I do, they do not look as good and realistic as in fact , a comic book (comic , manga , anything would work) . I did some testing with some brushes I picked up, also applying some tones, and here are the results of an altered photo :


Original photo :
US-Army_soldier_taking_cover.jpg


Altered photo :
FinalMenor.jpg


What I did was to turn the image into grayscale , and shifted curves to almost full black and white.
Altered photo by Adobe Illustrator and darkened in Photoshop :
Original:
man_lying_in_the_grass_42-22843848.jpg
Altered in Illustrator:
man_lying_in_the_grass_42-22843848B.jpg

Darkenned at Photoshop version:
man_lying_in_the_grass_42-22843848Bb.jpg

Even so , the pictures do not look much like an art to me, or even a drawing . They just seem like pieces of black and white pictures randomly placed together. There is no artistic feel, or appeal on them.

Here is the first page of my comic, the only one I did so far. I did stroke with brushes here and there, like on his clothes to give a better visual appeal:

01ProntoMenor.jpg
How do I change these images or create new ones with more artistic, hand drawn appeal? I am sure there must be a way using either Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. Maybe I should download some filters? Or more brushes?


Any suggestions are welcome.
Thanks in advance.
 
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Re: Need help on how to convert photos to black and white drawings, Grunge style or a

To be honest, I've never seen *any* automated procedure for converting a photo to a cartoon (or to a painting, for that matter) that was convincing, ie, made me think it was done in the classic way, manually, by a cartoonist.

In my opinion, one of the main reasons for this is that not one of the automated procedures that I've ever seen has been able to mimic the very human ability to abstract the edges in the scene into a very small number of pen / brush strokes, abstract the colors into a small number of flood fills, and intentionally distort the geometry of the characters and background like a caricaturist, ie, to convey their roles and most salient features.

I haven't attempted such an algorithmic/automatic conversion in a long time, so, just for the heck of it, I gave it a shot. My result (shown below) is, as I said above, predictable and unconvincing. It's obvious that it came from a photo. It just doesn't look like a real cartoon :-( .

I think you either have to resign yourself to the results of such semi-automatic procedures (... just call it "your style", LOL), or employ someone like our own "Agent Moeller" who is a good cartoonist.

Cheers,

Tom M



US-Army_soldier_taking_cover-tjm01_acr-ps01b_698px_wide-01.jpg
 
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Re: Need help on how to convert photos to black and white drawings, Grunge style or a

Well, I did like your image, and also your points toward the artwork that I have never really thought about. But I still think there could be some way to capture the models and convert them into art, something like how they use in Hollywood for movies. Take Gollum, for example, from Lord of the Rings. It was a man acting like him, with a special cloth, and then they rendered all the effects on the computer: 9982.jpg
Maybe there are sets of Brushes, or special Filters that could help me with this?
I don't know, but this kind of art looks so close, but yet so far away.
Here are some other examples of black and white comic artworks. I would die happy if my works could at least look something close to these:

torso_panel.jpg

frankenstein__s_bride_swoons____by_liamsharp-d4w1xd5.jpg

3285073-batman+bw+01.jpg
 
Re: Need help on how to convert photos to black and white drawings, Grunge style or a

You know, I really like Toms outcome, it looks much more hand drawn.

I think it would be almost impossible to get the same pen and ink effect that you see in your example above. There's some great crosshatching in the shading that you simply can't reproduce successfully with Ps.

At best you could get a Pointillism effect like these below. These wer made by desatting, poster edge filter filter, duplicating that layer and then using a noise filter. I then played with the layer modes.

Darker color

Screen Shot 2014-03-11 at 1.31.35 PM.png

Overlay

Screen Shot 2014-03-11 at 1.31.58 PM.png

I'm certain this is not what your desiring.
 
Re: Need help on how to convert photos to black and white drawings, Grunge style or a

One of the biggest obstacles with using any automated filter or other plugin is the one fact that these tools treats all edges as just any other edge. This causes individual objects and people to lose their focus in the background information. One way to get around this is to clip out each object or person and run your process on them independently. Then add in a border (stroke) around each when you place it into the treated scene. Therre will likelyt be a need for fine tuning of the borders depending on the levels of contrast in the original and in your treatment process.
 
Re: Need help on how to convert photos to black and white drawings, Grunge style or a

IamSam said:
You know, I really like Toms outcome, it looks much more hand drawn.

I think it would be almost impossible to get the same pen and ink effect that you see in your example above. There's some great crosshatching in the shading that you simply can't reproduce successfully with Ps.

At best you could get a Pointillism effect like these below. These wer made by desatting, poster edge filter filter, duplicating that layer and then using a noise filter. I then played with the layer modes.

Darker color

View attachment 43098

Overlay

View attachment 43099

I'm certain this is not what your desiring.
Click to expand...

Even with many different Brush models, being applied (almost) mannually over the art? This is the benefit of being a Grunge artwork, everything looks more "dirty". But I like your models and your ideas, thank you very much :)
 
Re: Need help on how to convert photos to black and white drawings, Grunge style or a

Crotale said:
One of the biggest obstacles with using any automated filter or other plugin is the one fact that these tools treats all edges as just any other edge. This causes individual objects and people to lose their focus in the background information. One way to get around this is to clip out each object or person and run your process on them independently. Then add in a border (stroke) around each when you place it into the treated scene. Therre will likelyt be a need for fine tuning of the borders depending on the levels of contrast in the original and in your treatment process.
Click to expand...

That is a great idea, I will try that. I really think it will work. As soon as I get back to my PC, I will post the results. Thanks in advance :)
 
Re: Need help on how to convert photos to black and white drawings, Grunge style or a

Crotale said:
... One way to get around this is to clip out each object or person and run your process on them independently. Then add in a border (stroke) around each when you place it into the treated scene. ...
Click to expand...
Great minds! In the example I posted, I did *EXACTLY* what you suggested in your first sentence (above). This is why the soldier in mine is (intentionally) brighter and intentionally stands out from the background. I did not stroke the soldier because I strongly suspected this wasn't what the OP was looking for, but doing so is a trick I use all the time.

Great comment, Crotale!

Tom
 
Re: Need help on how to convert photos to black and white drawings, Grunge style or a

Have you tried using the brush after you've done all your filtering effects? Throw in some hand drawn lines and see how that looks.

Agent Moeller
 
Re: Need help on how to convert photos to black and white drawings, Grunge style or a

Hello guys, thank you for the replies. I am updating the post, since I just fixed my PC and managed to work on a new art for a bit.
I did visit all of the links above, and they are really cool. But they still lack the artistic feel I am searching for. I did as agentmoeller said above on this drawing, and so far I like the result. It is a bit too dark, but I can improve on this technique and make it better. I would love some comments and opinnions from all of you.

Original picture:
F201211201000121081310081.jpg

Worked over:
F201211201000121081310081B.jpg


Thanks for the help so far :)
 
Re: Need help on how to convert photos to black and white drawings, Grunge style or a

Very nice!

I couldn't resist trying the technique of treating the background differently from the main subject of the frame. In this case, I lowered the contrast of the background, and I applied an outer stroke + an inner (dark) glow to the subject to try to make him pop more.

T

orig-tjm01_inner_shadow_outer_stroke_lo_contrast_bkgnd-01_698px_wide.jpg
 
Re: Need help on how to convert photos to black and white drawings, Grunge style or a

Tom Mann said:
Very nice!

I couldn't resist trying the technique of treating the background differently from the main subject of the frame. In this case, I lowered the contrast of the background, and I applied an outer stroke + an inner (dark) glow to the subject to try to make him pop more.


T

View attachment 43182
Click to expand...

Wow, I haven't thought of that. It looks amazing Tom! I love how the boy seems to catch much more attention than the rest of the crowd. Thank you very much :)

By the way, does anyone know where I could find more brushes with Half Tones, or even Hashuras to make special effects?
Thanks to everyone for the support :)
 
Re: Need help on how to convert photos to black and white drawings, Grunge style or a

I tried to further improve this technique, but the grey tones are yet not convincing me. I feel something is lacking, like details on the roof and walls of the subway, and also on the background, but I don't know what to do, or how to fix it. Does anyone have an idea? How could I add a "metalic" effect on the walls, to resemble a real subway, considering the fact that the drawing is only black and white? What should I add on the background to make it feel more realistic? Thanks again, in advance :)

F201211201000121081310081BPixelTest.jpg
 
Re: Need help on how to convert photos to black and white drawings, Grunge style or a

Personally I think it looks pretty darn good. You'll have to make selections that allow you to restrict a pattern overlay or clipped layer with the pattern. That is my suggestion. Find a good, smooth and polished metal texture and import it as a layer above your ceiling and wall selection. Clip, adjust blend modes and opacity as needed. Then create an above layer and paint in highlights. Probably you'll want to use multiply, duplicate the layer and set that one to overlay or vivid light. You can consider adding a shape tool starburst for added reflected highlight or use filter>render>lighting effects to do the same kind of effect.
 
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