Sickdesigner

Every now and again I stumble onto a technique which is so simple and effective that it has to be shared. I like to call this one the “Manual shaded threshold” technique. The name stems from the not so popular anymore effect of Threshold, which turns an image into just black and white based on light values. The original effect is messy and weird and never got things just right, so this is where the “Manual shaded threshold” technique comes in. But we’re not just going to dive into the effect. To show you guys that it’s actually useful, we’re going to make an Andy Warhol style poster. So let’s get crackin!

01

Yes, I used a screenshot from the Trololo video and no, this is not another Trololo joke! This is an actual tutorial. We all get inspiration from strange sources sometimes and for me Trololo has done the trick. Also, for this technique I desaturated the image, in order focus just on the shades. This is taken directly from the popular video and, other than desaturating, is unaltered in any way.

02

Normally I’d save the grand and awesome technique for last, but it’s kind of hard to do that with this one, so here it is: turn down the opacity of the picture to about 10%, just like above. Notice how only the key features of Eduard Khil’s face are noticeable? Well, that’s what we need and only this to achieve our effect. It sounded a whole lot more dramatic in my head, but let’s keep going.

03

Pick up our trusty Pen tool and start drawing the shapes that are most obvious to you. You’ll squint and scratch your head in the process but it’s actually not that hard.
Wait, you might ask, this is the great technique? Yep. You see, the point of the Threshold effect was to isolate only the most essential features of a picture. But that it didn’t always manage to achieve it 100%. By lowering the opacity of the picture you’re forcing your eyes and brain to see and perceive only the most basic of features, which are exactly the ones you’ll be tracing with the Pen tool. Makes sense now, doesn’t it?

04

We’re obviously not superheroes and our eyes can only take so long of this abuse, so don’t try to hard. Instead, after you feel comfortable having done the trace, bring the image back to 100% opacity and tweak the shape’s anchor points. This is one of the reasons why using non-destructive tools, such as the Pen tool is very handy.

05

I did mention the technique is called “Manual shaded threshold”, right? Well, now comes the shaded part of the equation. With the image still at 100%, trace another shape with your Pen tool. This new shape should be traced around the first shape. Try to go more around the eyes, as they are the deepest element of the face and keep varying the shape itself; it looks boring otherwise.

06

Let’s get rid of the original picture now. We can still tweak the shaded shapes to look more natural and less jagged.

07

Now, draw a large shape behind the two we’ve already made that’s lighter than the black we used for the main features but still a bit lighter than the shaded shape. I’ve also created a few white shapes behind our first one to make the eyes and teeth.

08

My picture is 680 x 680 pixels so with a bit of math it was easy to create a grid. My blocks are 200 x 200 pixels and there’s a 40 pixel margin from the edge of the picture.

09

Let’s resize our head to fit within the first block.

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And duplicate it 8 times in each of the other block. Dang, that’s a lot of Russian.

11

Here’s where the fun starts. One of the coolest advantages of working non-destructively is the ability to change and modify color on the fly. So play around with colors. I tried to not steer too much off the pop art style of one of Andy Warhol’s masterpieces. For this part I only affected the skin shape. The main features will remain black throughout this tutorial, but you can play with that too and still have a cool effect.

12

Now comes the shaded layer’s turn. Values here have, generally, two types of colors: the first are neighboring (like the first one)  or inverted like the fuchsia one (that would be the one from the last row, second column).

13

Now let’s make a square 200 x 200 pixels shape behind all the faces for each of the grid spaces, that’s 9 total. For now I just made the first one.

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And here are the rest of them. The colors I chose are very pastel, so as not to detract from the faces. The Hue is basically the invert of the skin layer. So for the first block, for example, the skin is red, so the square behind is green, which is it’s negative.

15

The squares are a nice touch but the fact that they’re touching is a bit weird and reminds me of a checker board. So I decreased their width and height by 10 pixels each. That’s 10 pixels off the top, 10 pixels off the bottom etc.

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Alright, now we’re getting somewhere!

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Now let’s give it a worn look, like any respectable pop art design should. I used this picture set on Pin Light blending and on 30% opacity, but feel free to experiment, as the opportunities are literally almost endless. And just so you can better see the difference between where we started and where we ended up, take a look at the next image.

Pretty cool, ha? Considering that we started with a pixelated 1960s video screenshot I like to think the result is pretty awesome. What, I can’t toot my own horn a bit?

This design is so easy to work with and offers so much possibilities that I felt I had to share a couple of variations on this theme:

And now, my friends, I leave you with the wonder and marvel of the master himself, Eduard Khil. Tell it how it is Eduard:

Hopefully you learned something from this little tutorial/technique and didn’t just run through it mindlessly. Not that any of you would, I’m sure. Ahem… On the other hand, if you’re reading this, then you definitely read at least half of the stuff in this post, so I guess we’re even. See you next time, everyone!

by Radu Chelariu