How do you make real photos look like cartoons?

[Tom]

I've seen many images recently of REAL people in cartoons/animes format. I've also seen real photos that look exactly like these cartoon pics. So I think that there's some photo-editing program out there that can make real pictures look like cartoon/anime. Is there?

[Vic_Viper]

Photoshop has the special effect to make images 2D-like, but how "cartoon-like" are the cartoon-like images that u saw? Maybe u can qoute us some?

[Suika]

Most likely Photoshop, Gimp, or some other photo-editing program was used. The things one can do with those programs are pretty limitless.

My guess is that those images weren't edited with a simple filter... It'd be interesting to see what techniques were employed, but it's hard to know without seeing some images. So could you post some examples?

[Tom]

Guys, here are some examples:

Ekin Cheng from the new Storm Riders movie
$this->handle_bbcode_img_match('http://i2.sinaimg.cn/ent/m/c/p/2008-03-19/U1982P28T3D1953206F328DT20080319094457.jpg')

Aaron Kwok
$this->handle_bbcode_img_match('http://i3.sinaimg.cn/ent/m/c/p/2008-03-19/U1982P28T3D1953206F329DT20080319094457.jpg')

So how do they make these pics look like this?

[kidd]

Maybe they are hand drawn?

[Vic_Viper]

Personally I think those are hand-draw.

I would be extremely amazed if it's real-life photo made from PS.

To me the swords, clothes and color tons are very obvious proofs of hand-draw.

Maybe u have other exmaple to show us?

[Tom]

Maybe u have other exmaple to show us?

Well, I've seen plenty of others, just can't find them right now. I heard that you could make pics look like cartoon by adjusting the blur level. Would you mind trying that out for me (I don't have PhotoShop)?

[Vic_Viper]

Well, I've seen plenty of others, just can't find them right now. I heard that you could make pics look like cartoon by adjusting the blur level. Would you mind trying that out for me (I don't have PhotoShop)?

I don't have PS with me anymore, however, here's some examples from Li Bing Bing forum http://www.spcnet.tv/forums/showthre...t=8848&page=14 (#271 post by Nefertari)

[Suika]

I work a lot in photoshop and I can tell you that one simple filter will not give you results like that. Adjusting the blur level will simply make it more blurry.

Those two pictures from the Storm Riders movie are very nice and obviously done by a pro artist with a good knowledge of art theory/concepts. They are either painstakingly "hand painted" or are paintovers (i.e. taking a picture and painting over it to make it look like a painting). For more of an idea of a paintover, check this link out.

On the other hand the Li Bing Bing pic is a photo applied with filters.