Thursday, July 19, 2018

I've always wanted to be a cartoon...




Ever wanted to be a cartoon? Where there is a will, there is a way! Today, we are going to show you how you can take any image, and turn it into a cartoon style graphic using Adobe Illustrator. 




1. Open up a new Illustrator file. The dimensions for this tutorial are 1296px by 864px, as they are the dimensions of the image we will be using. You can choose whichever dimensions you like. Click Create once you have selected your dimensions.

2. Once the new file loads, press Cmd+Shift+P on Mac, or Ctrl+Shift+P on Windows on your keyboard, to open up a file directory to access your image. Alternatively, to find the same menu you can go to File > Place.

3. Locate the image in the file directory, then click Place.

4. Place and resize the image to where you would like it on the Artboard.

5. Go to Window > Image Trace to open the Image Trace panel.




6. Now for the Fun! Select the image, and look over to the Image Trace panel we just opened.

7. Click the Preset drop down menu. These are all the settings for the image tracing, of which some will give you further options to tweak once selected. For this tutorial, select Sketched Art.

8. Under Preset, is the View drop down menu. Select Tracing Result.

9. Under View, is the Mode drop down menu. This is where you can select the colour mode. For this tutorial, we are going to select Colour.

10. You will then have Palette options beneath View. We find the most cartoon-like option to be Limited, but feel free to see which suits your image best.

11. You can reduce the amount of colours in the Colors option beneath Palette. For this example, we have set it to 8.

12. Once you have played with the settings and are happy with the image, change View to Tracing Result with Outlines. This gives us outlines of where we are about to colour in.




13. Click the image and go to Object > Expand. Ensure Fill and Stroke are selected, then click OK.




14. Once your object is expanded, colour away! Click a shape you would like to fill, and select a colour you would like.

15. Once you’re done, don’t forget to save the Illustrator file. Go to File > Save As, and navigate to a location on your device.




16. To export your image, go to File > Export > Export As, and navigate to a location on your device. 17. Select the format you wish to export the image as, from the Save as type drop down menu. For this example, we will select PNG. If you have selected PNG, a PNG Options panel will appear. Select the Resolution, Anti-aliasing, and Background Color that suits you, and click OK.




Congratulations! You're a cartoon.

nsquared solutions

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