Cartoon Effect with Photoshop Filters Tutorial

Playing with Photoshop filters can be very funny and you can end up creating really cool photo effects. In this quick video I will show you how to create a cool cartoon effect or painting effect using Photoshop filters.

Download stock photo used in this tutorial

Since the introduction of the Oil Paint Filter, I’ve seen lots of new photo effects around the internet. Smartphone apps now also introduce advanced photo effects for mobile phone as their graphics and processing power are increasing.

So this is how to create a cartoon effect using Photoshop Filters

This effect is really easy to achieve and this tutorial is for photoshop beginners so I will explain it in more details. The video is only 4 minutes long.

Open your desired photo and create a copy of it with Ctrl+J. The first filter I applied is the Anisotropic Diffuse so go to Filter>Stylize>Diffuse and select the Anisotropic mode. Apply this filter 2 or 3 times pressing Ctrl+F to reapply it as many times as you want. I applied it 3 times. See the result below

Now apply the Shadows/Highlights filter to get more light on your image. Settings may vary from image to image.

I added some more saturation to the image using a Gradient Map set to Saturation at 30-50% Opacity. The colored preset I used, is located inside the Spectrums group.

Now let’s create the painting effect

Merge all visible layers onto a new one with Shift+Cmd+Alt+E or flatten the image and go to Filter>Oil Paint or if you are using Photoshop CC Filter>Stylize>Oil Paint. And apply the amount of Cleanliness and Stylization that you want. Make sure Shine is set to 0 and click OK.

The last step is to darken the edges and create the final cartoon effect. In order to achieve this effect I used the Filter Gallery again. I used the Poster Edges filter located in the Artistic folder.