Forgive the newbie question in Photoshop.

How do you go about tracing something, such as a low contrast photo? I'm referring to a cartoon effect on a new layer: strong outlines, flood fills, no anti-alias.

I tried using illustrator's paths but the shapes are too complicated, and has too many segments. Also there seems to be a long learning curve.

Is the pencil tool in Photoshop the best way? Are there other program which do this specific task easier? Thanks

Message edited on: 02/23/2006 14:07

Try using a Poster Edges Filter; go to Filter, Artistic, Poster Edges. Keep the settings low, Edge Thickness and Edge Intensity below 4 and Posterization at about 1 or 2. See if that's the look you want to go for... After that you can use good old Brightness/Contrast; go to Image; Adjustments; Brightness/Contrast. This tool does have a reputation for being anything but subtle, but give it a try anyway. If you really want to get something like a cel shade image and aren't afraid of a little work, give this tutorial a shot, it's for a car but can be aplied on other images too. http://hyperion.50megs.com/cell.htm Hope this helps, Greetz

If Im understand corectly what you want this could be useful :) 1) Duplicate the Background layer and set the blend mode to multiply 2) go to filter-other-highpass (set between 1-3) you need the conturs to be visible 3) blur-gaussian blur (0,2 should be enough) 4) and finaly go to image-adjustment-treshold and get the slider down until you`re happy with effect :) Tihomir

Thanks for the tips. The web page looks nice, Mikewave. I'll try filter tip, tantarus. Cheers