Vintage art poster look

mercphoto

Any way in Photoshop to get something similar to this effect from a color photo?

http://www.allposters.com/-st/Vintage-Auto-Racing-Posters_c19822_.htm

I'm thinking it might need to be simplified, and then possibly a pastel or colored pencil effect maybe?

David_S85

Sort of
Go to DP Review's Retouching forum and search for the Popart or Popartist action script(s).

What those do, in a nutshell, is:

• Reduces colors to from 16.7 million to from 12 to 16 colors
• Blurs the image
• Greatly increases image saturation
• Sharpens the image

Well, there's a lot more to it than that, such as adjusting for image size (needs to be a lot smaller than out-of-camera size), and other tweaks, but some results can be fairly close to some of those posters on the page you linked.

mercphoto wrote:

Any way in Photoshop to get something similar to this effect from a color photo?

http://www.allposters.com/-st/Vintage-Auto-Racing-Posters_c19822_.htm

I'm thinking it might need to be simplified, and then possibly a pastel or colored pencil effect maybe?

mercphoto

Thanks Dave. He has a lot of interesting actions there to choose from! http://homepages.slingshot.co.nz/~mikefinn/action.html

XO-Studios

mercphoto wrote:

Any way in Photoshop to get something similar to this effect from a color photo?

http://www.allposters.com/-st/Vintage-Auto-Racing-Posters_c19822_.htm

I'm thinking it might need to be simplified, and then possibly a pastel or colored pencil effect maybe?

Try Buzz Pro plug in to simplify, then posterize, and also use posterize/edges, and invert those edges.

XO,

ps. how about posting a pic and we all have a go at it?

mercphoto

XO-Studios wrote:

ps. how about posting a pic and we all have a go at it?

Here's the original, then after running through the Pop art action above. I don't like the effect.

DavidTO

Seems to me that they were most likely 4 color posters, and if you posterized your image by selecting 4 appropriate colors you would have a base that you would then have to illustrate over, using a Wacom tablet, I would assume rather than a mouse. You could airbrush over them to break up the solid colors, you could add some motion streaks and shading. I don't see how any action could get you there, since the greatest thing about those posters is the human touch. But the good news is you wouldn't have to draw these things out of thin air, you have a photograph to start with.

DavidTO

You may also want to download the trial of Corel Painter. It may be better suited to what you want to do. I don't really know, but looking at the web site, it looks promising.

mercphoto

DavidTO wrote:

Seems to me that they were most likely 4 color posters, and if you posterized your image by selecting 4 appropriate colors you would have a base that you would then have to illustrate over, using a Wacom tablet, I would assume rather than a mouse. You could airbrush over them to break up the solid colors, you could add some motion streaks and shading. I don't see how any action could get you there, since the greatest thing about those posters is the human touch. But the good news is you wouldn't have to draw these things out of thin air, you have a photograph to start with.

So you are saying to take a small number of colors, and then manually paint over the photo? Is there any way to tell Photoshop "replaces colors in this range with this single color?"

DavidTO

mercphoto wrote:

So you are saying to take a small number of colors, and then manually paint over the photo? Is there any way to tell Photoshop "replaces colors in this range with this single color?"

don't know exactly, but I think so. You'd have to ask someone more educmacated than me. But if you chose Posterize, you could always replace the colors. The real point is that I don't see how you could really pull that off without some hands-on illustrating, at least the airbrushing, shading, etc. It would be a ton of fun, though I would think.

XO-Studios

mercphoto wrote:

So you are saying to take a small number of colors, and then manually paint over the photo? Is there any way to tell Photoshop "replaces colors in this range with this single color?"

Ok after a couple of hours, I am tired of working on it, but how about this.

XO,

ps email me for PSD

mercphoto

I think this looks much closer. All I did was use Image Size to throw away some pixles, then converted from 16-bit to 8-bit mode, then ran the action again. The results are strikingly different than before.

David_S85

Working on it
I am working on a variant PoPaRtIsT recipe in PSP for posters like the cars.

Stay tuned...

David_S85

A try at it


I cropped and simplified the image. The posted image on the previous page was very small and with small details. I upsized the image 300%, then added more grass above for room for a banner.

This is a variation of the Popartist routine, done mannually (I don't like scripts) in PSP7, although it would simple enough to do this in any advanced editor. 9 colors used.

XO-Studios

XO-Studios wrote:

Ok after a couple of hours, I am tired of working on it, but how about this.

XO,

ps email me for PSD

Work flow:

Rotate canvas about 10 degrees, so verticals are vertical.

Take original picture, and isolate each of the main subjects in a separate layerset. In my case I ended up with (in this stacking order)
Driver
Curb
Asfalt
Plane
Building
Grass
Sky
I basically start with a loose lasso and copy the main component to its own layer inside a layerset and there use eraser to remove unwanted items.

Next in each layer set, copy the isolated layer, and make original invisible (i.e. safe the intermediate result in case you mess up)

In the copy, clone or smudge unwanted items, i.e. in curb I cloned the head of the driver away, in the sky, the light posts had to go. Also used smudge to stretch the sky a little bit and to make the edges look softer, was needed since rotate left some white spaces.

For all layers, I used buzz.Pro Stack filter and selected simplify 2 or simplify 3. On top of that in some layers I used brightness/contrast on top of simpify for example reduced the buildings contrast and increased brightness and in plane increased contrast so the tail would pop.

The grass and the asfalt have had a watercolor filter on top, and were posterized after being simplified.

The grass has a mask with rendered clouds and has been turned down in brightness, also the grass no longer has the chainlink fence, I cloned that away before anything else.

The driver was also simplified (simplified 2), and while I turned down the curb a little, I added saturation to the driver. With the driver as a selection, I created a new layer, expanded the driver selection by 1 or 2 pixels, filled that with white and blurred it to create a small halo around the driver. Put this layer below (is behind) the. Also copied the modified driver layers one extra time, put it below/behind the halo, erased all but viewers left side of it, and applied motion blur at an angle.

That is it in a nutshell, could be perfected, but I think I got close enough to document what can be done and what to do at several steps. Putting each main component on its own layer lets you control more how each will look, and lets you also control each components contrast and saturation and a such what visual weight they have in the picture.

FWIW,

XO,

Nikolai

Another way of doing it..
... is to hire somebody like my elder daughter Natalie (16 y.o., who's naturally good (computer) artist) - to do it for ya:): .
Check out her recent vexels (..if you think these are simply posterized photos - look again...:-), or her other wacom work.

HTH

Cheers!

XO-Studios

Nikolai wrote:

... is to hire somebody like my elder daughter Natalie (16 y.o., who's naturally good (computer) artist) - to do it for ya:): .
Check out her recent vexels (..if you think these are simply posterized photos - look again...:-), or her other wacom work.

HTH

Cheers!

WOW very nice

XO,