Q&A: How do I create comic book art

I’m not familiar with Illustrator but I’d really like to convert photos into comic book style illustrations. How can I do this using Photoshop CS?
Asghar Morjaria

Thanks to Photoshop’s powerful toolset you can create comic book style artwork from scratch without the need to pop into Illustrator. In this walkthrough we’ll demonstrate how to use the Filters menu to create the distinctive coloured dots that traditional comic book printing processes utilise in large areas of colour. We’ll also use some layer blending techniques to add washes of colour to the final image.

Be bold
Choose a dramatic dynamic source image. Duplicate the background layer. Select the copy and go to Image>Adjustments
>Threshold. Setting our Threshold value to 65 gave us the type of bold and striking line art you’d get using Illustrator CS2′s Live Trace menu.

Completely dotty
Select the Threshold layer and go to Filter>Sketch>Halftone Pattern. Set the Pattern Type to Dot, Contrast to 13 and Size to 5. Click OK. Set the Halftone Pattern’s layer blending mode to Overlay.

Create a colour wash
Duplicate the coloured background layer. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Apply a blur of 8 pixels to simplify the details on the coloured layer. This adds a simplified wash of colours to the image. Experiment with these techniques to add more layers, texture and colour.