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How about doing a really fun retro comic book effect for your favorite
photographs?
It's fun to do and it will amaze your friends
and family.
The technique is not particularly difficult using a few different
Photoshop techniques and the result is surprisingly effective!
The look of a page is quite a bit different from what you would
normally do in Photoshop. The images of a retro comic page can be
grainy with visible half tone values.
The paper is generally off white and the text is contained in text
boxes, speech balloons and thought balloons.
The first thing to do is find a suitable photograph to work with - this
one should do nicely ....
This one came from Stock Exchange.
The Technique
 The
first thing to do is increase the overall contrast of the picture with
a Levels adjustment.
Create a new Levels Adjustment layer
and pull the Shadow and Highlight sliders in toward the centre
slider.
A Input setting of 60 for the Shadows (left slider) and 220 for the
Highlights (right slider) should do nicely. Leave the middle
slider alone unless you feel an urgent need to move it somewhere.
After completing the adjustment, flatten the image (Layer > Flatten Image).
This is how the photograph looks after this adjustment ....
Do you remember comic book paper? Lower quality, it was, and
the next step is to simulate the appearance of that paper.
Select Filters >
Artistic > Film Grain and mess about with the
settings. On this picture I used these settings ...
- Grain - 6
- Highlight - 5
- Intensity - 10
To get this result ...
It's coming along nicely, isn't it?
OK - the next step is to add a Halftone effect - you know - those
little dots that are seen in comic books.
 First
duplicate the Background layer and on the
top layer select Filter
> Pixelate >
Color Halftone.
Leave the Screen Angles at their default settings and set the Max. Radius
to 4.
Now change the Blend Mode
of the top layer to Darken
and here's how our picture is looking now ...
If you're working on a face then you may find that the skin tone is far
too red and needs some adjustment.
This is where Hue/Saturation
comes in kinda handy ...
Create a new Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer and drop down menu at the
top (it says Master) and select Reds.
Now lower the Saturation slider (move it to the left) until that nasty
red cast is removed.
Not bad and we could stop right here and be satisfied with the result -
but why the heck would we do that?
Building
The Comic Page
A comic page generally has interesting text and speech bubbles and cool
text boxes.
What we have so far is good but it needs some comic book embellishments
to spruce up the page.
The first thing that this one needed was a bit of cropping before the
next step.
Border
This will be done with a Layer Style. Make sure the top layer
is selected (Halftone Color layer) and then double click on the right
side of the layer to open the Layer Style Palette.
At the bottom is the Stroke - check that then highlight the word "Stroke".
The settings will vary depending on the size of your image.
These are the settings for my comic page ...
- Size - 35 pixels
- Position - Inside
- Fill Type - color
- Color - #E3D3C0
Headline Text Box
So now we have the photo turned into a comic picture and a background
paper has been added. Now its time to add some text. The
first one is a Headline Text Box that will set the scene for the page.
This is how to do it ...
Add a new layer and create a rectangular selection like this ...
Now - either paint the selection an orange color or create an orange
foreground to background gradient and draw it in the selection - I
chose the gradient.
The next step is to add a stroke to the gradient.
Go to Edit >
Stroke to bring up this dialogue box.
My image is large so I chose a stroke of 10 pixels but yours may be
different.
Set the color to black and set the location to Inside.
Description Text Box
This text box is at the bottom of the page and provides a description
of the action.
 Add a new
layer and then drag out a selection
that is slightly larger than the original one you added at the top of
the page.
Fill this one with white and add a stroke in the same way you did
earlier.
Now you've got two text frames that will be filled later.
Until then - create another layer and drag out a selection around the
image on the inside of the paper - you can see the selection on the
picture here.
Go to Edit > Stroke and
choose a size for the outline.
Set the color to black and the Location to Inside and hit OK
and the deselect the selection.
This will give you a nice black frame around the picture.
To make the frame somewhat distressed we're going to add some
filters ...
- Filter
> Blur > Blur More
- Filter
> Distort > Ripple (amount around 20%, size
Medium)
- Filter
> Sharpen > Sharpen More
Here's where we are at this point ...
Adding
Text
The text is the easy part to add - all you need are some comic fonts
and they are readily available with a quick search.
The hardest part about adding text is deciding what to say!
You're going to create a layer for each text box, resize the text and
drag it over the text frames you created earlier - it's that simple.
This is the end result ...
The big drop capital was created on it's own layer, colored red and
then resized a lot. Because it was on it's own layer it was easy
to move around with the Move tool.
I also added a Drop Shadow to each of the text layers which sets off
the text quite nicely.
Speech
And Thought Balloons
Perhaps you would like to add a text balloon or maybe even a thought
balloon - nah - this picture begs for a text balloon.
You can also find text balloons and thought balloons for downloading
(sometimes they're called speech balloons).
However,
if you want total control over your comic page then perhaps you would
like to make your own from scratch - and here's how to do it ...
Speech
Balloons
- Create a new layer on top of the stack.
- Grab the Elliptical Marquee Tool and draw an ellipse where
you want the speech balloon to be located.
- Now grab the Polygonal Selection Tool, press the Shift key
(this adds to the selection) and drag out a little arrow.
- Go to Edit > Stroke
and when the dialogue comes up choose a size, select Center and click
OK.
- Now deselect (Ctrl-D/Cmd-D)
and there you have it.
If you want you can add some Layer Styles like Drop Shadow.
Thought
Balloons
 Start
by creating an oval selection like this.
Now for the fun part ...
keep the oval selection tool active, press the Shift key and start
adding to the selection by drawing small selections at the edges - this
gives the oval selection a slightly scalloped appearance.
This is how the thought balloon will look.
The next step is to make smaller thought balloons from one of the eges
working toward the character. Each of the smaller thought
balloons should be scalloped as well.
It is easier to make each small thought balloon if you do it on a
separate layer and then Merge Down
when you are done.
Here is a finished thought balloon ...
Here's our picture with a speech balloon ...
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Page Links
The
Technique
Building The Page
Speech/Thought
Balloons
- Speech Balloon
- Thought Balloon
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