The basics

298 ADVANCED PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS 5.0 FOR DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHERS
PRODUCING EFFECTIVE
GRAPHICS
Book resources at: www.adv-elements.com
Tribute to Warhol >>
With a technique that
reminds us of the
colorful days of the
Sixties a full color
picture is turned into a
four-part graphic
poster.
11.15 Posterized pictures
Suitable for Elements – 5.0, 4.0, 3.0, 2.0, 1.0 | Diffi culty level – Intermediate | Resources – Web image 1115
Related techniques – 11.14 | Menus used – Enhance, Image, Layer
Andy Warhol made the technique famous with his ‘Campbell Soup Cans’ and now you can
recreate the sixties and this posterized effect using Elements and your own digital camera.
Warhol’s images were extremely graphic and were constructed of very few colors, which were
applied in broad fl at areas of the picture. Following on from the previous technique, here I pay
tribute to Warhol by creating fl at color images using a reduced color set created with a single
fi lter in Elements.
In the example I started with a standard portrait, increased its contrast and then reduced the
numbers of colors used to make up the image with the Posterize feature. To make different color
combinations I adjusted the Hue and Saturation sliders in the Hue/Saturation feature.
To start the process the picture will need to contain a little more contrast than normal. I
enhanced the contrast with the Levels feature (Enhance> Adjust Lighting>Levels) but you could
easily use the Contrast slider (Enhance > Adjust Lighting>Brightness/Contrast). To increase
contrast you need to click-drag the black point and white point triangles towards the center of
the Levels histogram.