Posterizing an Image in Photoshop » By Matt Kloskowski

In the premiere issue of Layers magazine, I wrote an Illustrator tutorial on how to convert a photograph to a vector image (May/June 2005, p. 48). In the first step, I mentioned a technique in Photoshop to help out with getting this process started. Here's the tutorial mentioned in the magazine that accompanies the Illustrator column.

STEP 1
First, open your photograph in Photoshop.

STEP 2
Next, we want to add a Posterize adjustment to help make this image more manageable when tracing. But we're going to use an adjustment layer so we can experiment a little more freely with the settings if we need to after we apply the adjustment. Choose Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Posterize. When the New Layer dialog appears, click OK to add the adjustment layer. This will display the Posterize dialog as shown here.

STEP 3
Experiment with the Level setting. Try to pick a Level setting high enough to make the photograph still look real but low enough to the point where you can start to see some areas that look easy to trace. The higher the setting the more difficult it will be to trace. I chose a Level setting of 6.