Lilahpops

Find your creative streak and turn your photos into comic strips!

I recently read a very detailed, comprehensive tutorial about enhancing your photos with a retro comic book effect. The tutorial is an excellent example of one of the many and varied post-production techniques you can apply to your own photos. I was inspired to try out this comic book effect on some of my own photos.

Again, one of my cats has the starring role.

The original images

As a proud cat owner, you would be right in assuming that I have amassed gazillions of photos of my cats. I took these shots a while ago, and although they were sadly overexposed, I thought they were quite expressive and decided to hold onto them until I found a use for them. And then I found this tutorial.

Adding the comic book effect

The tutorial over at the Photoshop Roadmap is easy to follow. There is also cartoon-type fonts for you to download. It’s fun and you’ll be pleased with the results. I’d love to know how you go in the comments.

I only took one deviation from the steps which was to use iPhoto to make the initial adjustments to the levels, saturation and color. Click the images below for the higher resolution versions.

So there you have it – my first comic strip!

A couple of years ago I came across a website which has an excellent article called How to make a Life Poster using Photoshop. The post includes comprehensive step-by-step instructions on how to turn your photographic collection into a wall-hanging masterpiece. Inspired by the results, I decided to create a poster for my mother for her 60th birthday.

I gathered together (with a 95% contribution from one sister) the 98 photos necessary to carry out this project. The photos included my mother at various ages, her wedding, my father, her kids, flowers, bushland, workmates, all sorts of things that were related to or sentimental to her … after all, who has 98 photos of their own mother? Then I set to making my Life Poster.

Living in Australia, I couldn’t follow Step 7 (order a print of your poster online), so I simply burned the file to disk and took it to my local camera store. It was the first Life Poster the shop had printed up and I think we were all a bit nervous about the outcome! The result was beautiful, colorful and detailed. A huge 20×30 inch poster (I also got it framed) that she pored over with a grin here and a surprised gasp there. It now lives on a wall in her office.

Making a Life Poster was my first serious foray into the wonderful world of post-production software and techniques. It was a fun, creative photographic project and I look forward to making the next one.