Photoshop Tutorial by Vered:
How to turn an image into a coloured cartoon

Note: This tutorial was written using Photoshop 7, but should be possible to recreate in Photoshop 6 as well, and maybe in Paintshop Pro too. Also, you have to understand Photoshop layers for this tutorial.

1. Start with a basic image:

2. Go to the "image" menu, choose "adjustments" and then choose "desaturate". This will turn your image into black and white:

3. Now we will want to select our image and remove it from its background. For this we will use the pen tool:

4. Make sure that in the pen tool properties (in the top menu bar) the "paths" option is selected (circled in pink in the image below):

5. Now trace the image you want to cut out with the pen tool. You do not have to be too accurate since we will be turning the image into a cartoon:

6. Finish tracing the entire image until you meet the first point that you made with the pen tool, click that first point to close the path. This is the closed path that you should get:

7. Now we will need to turn the path into a selection. Go to the "paths" palette (if you can't see it go to the "window" menu and make sure "Paths" has a "V" next to it) then click on the "load path as a selection" button (circled in pink in the image):

8. Now you have selected the image that you want to cut out:

9. We will now copy the image into a new image with a white background. Press "CTRL+C" to first copy the selected image into an invisible clipboard, and then go to the "file" menu and choose "new". Make sure the background is white, and it would be good to change the image size and make it somewhat bigger than the option given in order for us to have more working space. With the new image with the white background open press "CTRL+V" to paste the selected image into the new image, if you will check the "layers" palette, you will see that the new image is in its own layer:

10. Make sure you are in the layer of the image you just pasted, then go to the "image" menu, choose "adjustments" and then choose "threshold". You can play with the threshold settings until you are satisfied:

11. Now go to the "select" menu and choose "color range". In the color range dialogue box make sure you have the "eyedropper" tool selected (circled in pink), then in the actual image, click on a black area (note where the eyedropper circled in light blue is). By doing this you will be selecting all the black area in the image:

12. This is what the selection should look like in the "color range" dialogue box:

13. To make sure we have selected all the black, go to the "select" menu while the selection is still loaded, (i.e., you can see the selection dashed lines around the image) and then choose "similar". This will ensure that pixels that are not pure black, but close in colour, are also selected.

14. Now create a new layer above the image with the selection and don't deselect the selection. Choose a fill colour other than black and fill the selected area in the new layer. I chose purple:

15. To add a contour to the above purple image, right click on its layer in the layer palette and choose "blending options":

16. Then make sure the "stroke" option is selected and within it change the settings according to the following image. Remember to choose the colour black:

17. This should be the result:

18. Now reselect the purple selection by clicking on the layer within the layer palette and all the while holding the CTRL button on your keyboard. Once you have reselected the image, go to the "select" menu and choose "inverse" to get an inversed selection. Choose a fill colour (I chose yellow) and fill the inversed area with it:

19. Essentially you now have your basic purple cartoon with black contour and yellow background. You can add embelishments using the "custom shape" tool that photoshop offers:

20. And achieve something like this with further playing:

Hope this has given you the basics of turning real life images into cartoons... and the rest is up to your crazy creative imagination!

Tutorial by Vered