How to make cartoonish like picture?

[Steve]

Here's an image posted by Ken aka vue666 The BOMB - dslreports.com

A traditional 'hot rod' I illustrated using Inkscape & Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X3 with some color adjustment in Topaz Adjust version4...

Cheers

Ken

I think talented people can do amazing things.
View other things he's drawn and posted on this site.

It's certainly doable to draw this pickup truck.

[kman]

if i had illustrator i could trace it. i did that all the time..but illustrator and all this is so expensive!

[Steve]

I'm strictly a PS guy, no Illustrator experience.

Are you saying you could trace an image illustrator and make it look like the OP's image?

[kman]

i am the OP lol. but illustrator is so much easier to trace on. i have used illustrator alot. and it makes it easy to trace and easy to fix. i tried using pen tool on photoshop but it didnt work good?

[Dezigns Unlimited]

kman, you talking about tools like Live Trace?? i played around with Illustrator but as of right now, i have little to no experience in Illustrator but am looking to dive into it a little more, i pretty much have PS figured out, well for what i use it for anyways...

[Dezigns Unlimited]

that is what i dont understand! i didnt know they made a chrome marker or anythign for the rims. i dont see how its possible to draw that and make it look like it was photoshoped!

That's the thing that bugs me... making it look like it was photo shopped, that's just funny if you think about it LOL

[kman]

it doesnt look like a drawing to me. it looks like something done on some type of program on the computer!! and yes im kind of talking about live trace. the thing about live tracing is it doesnt get all lines and details sometimes. i just use the regular pen tool to trace, because it is much easier and makes the lines actually straight and all that. also it is very easy to change colors, add fill, all that stuff on illustrator when you are tracing!

[Albobo]

As far as being limited to Photoshop goes, this is the only tutorial that I've found (then again, I haven't looked that hard) that produces clean, professional looking results. However, in truth the results greatly depend on your level of perception and/or perfectionism. Also, you DID mention not wanting to do too much work; this takes quite a bit of work especially when you have lots of detail.

Combine the two:
Pop Art Inspired by Lichtenstein - Online Tutorial at Melissa Clifton page 2.
Turn Photos of People into Line Art - Online Tutorial at Melissa Clifton page 2.

I'm not too sure how well it works for metallic/glossy surfaces like a truck though.

[kman]

thank you that looks kinda how i want it to!

[Ultiman]

i know this is a simple answer but creating a vector of the image is the most practical answer and has a very "cartoon look"
the basic idea i use to do this is to use the pen tool to trace outlines of the original image. you first simplify the image using "Image - Posterize"
i used a threshold of 10 here
After doing this you will see single areas of colours and these are what you will be tracing around.

select a colour using the eye dropper picker to suit the colour you are outlining

grab the pen tool and trace outlines. Make sure you use groups to organise the PSD it can fill up with little vectors very fast

after 10 or so Min i came up with this i haven't finished nor attempted to make it good sorry just want to show what i mean not much to look at yet a lot more time is needed and care but you get the point



some tutorials if you need help vectoring >>> HERE (click) <<<< 30 odd tutorials dedicated to vectoring
this can all be done in photoshop and the pen tool is no different between illustrator and Photoshop