Pop art effect turns photos into icons

October 6, 2007 – 5:24 pm

David Beckham pop art

I used a slightly different technique for the above picture of David Beckham than my earlier pop art example.

This time I put the Threshold layer (Image > Adjustments > Threshold) on the top and set it’s Layer Style to Multiply. Some of the underlying image was coloured in, some was Posterized (Image > Adjustments > Posterize). No matter what you do to the photo you can always tell who it is.

Osama Bin Laden pop art

A similar method was used for the above picture of Osama Bin Laden. There was incredible detail in the turban and the clothes that I kept from the photograph. I hand traced the colours on the face.

A important thing to remember about this sort of effect is that the flat colours and posterization mean that the image can be scaled up much larger than a similarly size photo can.

Lewis Hamilton pop art

I knew this picture of Lewis Hamilton with all his sponsorship logos would come up well with the posterize effect.

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  1. 4 Responses to “Pop art effect turns photos into icons”

  2. Osama an icon? I don’t know about that…but very cool nonetheless.

    By Adventures In Hosting on Oct 26, 2007

  3. I was using the word “icon” to mean a person that is regarded as a symbol of something rather than a symbol of something good. I apologise if I have offended anyone. Thanks for the comment, Adventures In Hosting.

    By Rob Cubbon on Oct 27, 2007

  4. That looks awesome! I’m going to be using this tutorial on some of our new myspace layouts

    By LCDLOVE Daily Myspace Layouts on Nov 13, 2007

  5. Thank you, LCDLOVE Daily Myspace Layouts.

    By Rob Cubbon on Nov 18, 2007

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