Add Comic Book Effect to Your Photos: Kiana Broussard

Step 1: 

Choose a picture of your liking, I chose a picture I took myself and cropped it so fit around her face. You may fix it or not to look however you want, but keep in mind we will be adding a border.

Step 2:

To give the picture an overall burn look, in the same background layer go to IMAGE>ADJUSTMENTS> LEVELS and input the levels provided. You can play with the last level to get the same look as my example, it just need to look similar.

Step 3:

We are on going to give the picture some graininess to give the illusion of an old quality paper. Go to FILTERS> FILTER GALLERY> ARTISTIC> FILM GRAIN. Use the input levels given (Grain: 5, Highlight area: 0, Intensity: 10) you can try different inputs depending on your picture to get the same look.

Step 4:

Now duplicate the background layer, and name it Halftone. Make sure your still in the layer Halftone for the next step.

Step 5:

In this step we are going to apply a halftone pattern to the image to give it the final old book printing effect. First turn the blend mode of Halftone layer to Darken. Then

, Go to FILTER> PIXELATE> COLOR HALFTONE. Set the Max radius to 20, or play with it to get the best result, while still in the darken blend mode.

Step 6:

For these next few steps, it’s all about adding the finishing touches to get it really looking like a comic book page. So for this step we will be adding a border, so still in the Halftone layer go to the layer style or Fx at the bottom of the panel and chose STROKE. You want the border to be a little thick, but it’s your personal preference I would still suggest using the same color as shown (f5ece1). Make sure to use the position INSIDE for the stroke settings.

Step 7:

Add a new layer and call it Boxes.

Step 8:

Now for the first box, use the shape tool above the little hand on the tool bar. If you can’t see the square, click and hold until a side bar appears with more options. Draw out the first square in the upper left hand corner, not to big. While in the shape tool, at the top left you will see options to add a stroke or fill, use the settings below to get the colors I used in my first box. For the fill I chose a gradient, and in the first little color chooser at the bottom. I chose an orange color (f7960a).

Step 8 (cont.):

In the second color chooser, I used a yellow (f9d750). Your end result should look like the image below. Also for the stroke use black, and a 3pt radius. The settings should look like the image below, when finished.

Step 9:

For the second box, still in the Boxes layer pull out a box slightly bigger and longer then the first at the bottom right hand side. It will be white with the same 3pt black stroke radius. It should finally look like the image below, when you have both the boxes done.

Step 10:

 The next step is to add a slight black border around the image. You first need to create a new layer and name it Border. Then go to the Rectangle Selection Tool from the tools bar. Drag out a selection from the top left (inside the white border) to the bottom right. 

Step 11: After you drag out the selection, Go to EDIT> STROKE, set the WIDTH: 20px, COLOR: Black, LOCATION: center, and press Ok. Deselect the selection (Command D), and go to FILTER> BLUR> BLUR MORE. Go to FILTER> DISTORT> RIPPLE, (use inputs below). After that go to FILTER> SHARPEN> SHARPEN MORE

Step 12:

Now this step we will be just adding text, you can chose your own text, but I used this one http://www.blambot.com/font_digitalstrip.shtml. We you get to this link, you want to chose under (Download: PC TTF) and then open the downloaded zip file, you want to chose the one that Digital Strip and Install Font. Then you just want the one that says Digital Strip and drag it to the little computer symbol. After that you should be able to go to the text tool in Photoshop and have it. 

Step 13: When you do the text, you want to put the M in the date in a separate text layer, and the last phrase in the white box also in a separate text layer. Just use these images to get the final look.

The Final Look: