Graphic novel style plugin / filter

[klingspor]

What kind of image will you be using as the source? It totally depends on that! No filter in the world is going to make a photo like that, but if you're trying to get 3D renders to look that way I'd suggest playing with variations of the plug-ins in Photoshop's "Artistic" and "Brush-Strokes" section of the filter menu.

My images are often similar in style and I always found those filters to be a good enough starting point. Once you've played with all different variations and applied them on different layers, you should get pleasing results.

Just remember that no filter will ever give you exactly the look you want, that's what the brush tools are there for...

[circumlocutious]

Microsoft put out a plugin called Impressionist. It is amazingly powerful and fully customizable. Check out www.retouchPro.com for some examples of what it can do.

[gregsmith]

Thanks for the reply - I know what you mean about a filter not giving me the exact effect - I've been using photoshop for years.
Basically I'm applying it to lots of frames of animation (for a fighting game) so it would be too time consuming to trace every frame using the brush tools.
I also don't need it to look EXACTLY like I've hand drawn it, just give the effect.
I've tried messing with the native 'artistic' filters, but just can't get what I want. Perhaps you wouldn't mind suggesting a combination that has worked well for you. The best I could get was by using watercolor, or poster edges then watercolor, but the results aren't really what I'm after.
I basically need a 'poster edges' type filter, but one that will produce thinner, sketchy lines where the edges are, to give it that hand drawn look.

[gregsmith]

thanks circum....had posted my reply just after you so didn't get a chance to read it first. I'll take a look!

[klingspor]

Obviously there's no set of filters that will work on every image, but the ones I usually start with are "cutout", "paint daubs" and "palette knife".
I make copies of my original layer and apply a different filter to each of the copies. For the outlines you may want to use "find-edges" and get that a bit more random with filters like the ones I mentioned above, then set blend to "multiply".
Playing with the opacity and blend modes usually gets me pretty close to the result I want.

Hope that helped!

[gregsmith]

thanks stefan. I'm getting some ok results with the native plugins.

Circum - where can I get this impressionist plugin? i can't find it anywhere, not even on that retouchpro site (one of the worst designed sites I've ever been to!)

[klingspor]

thanks stefan. I'm getting some ok results with the native plugins.

Circum - where can I get this impressionist plugin? i can't find it anywhere, not even on that retouchpro site (one of the worst designed sites I've ever been to!)That one was included with some older Microsoft photo-software (PhotoDraw 2000?) that's discontinued I believe...

[circumlocutious]

there were some people who had some old copies of them left. You might try sending a message to one of the moderators, DannyRaphael. He knows who has some extras.

[gregsmith]

Tried sending a pm to him and it said that he didn't exist! Searched the members and couldn't find anyone with a name like that.

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