Topic awaiting preservation: Che Guevara portrait effect

Remember that iconic portrait of Che, available on t-shirts the world over?

I've tried to re-create that effect in Photoshop using a combination of filters and level manipulation... but I can't seem to get it right.

Has anyone here perfected a successformula to get this sort of two-tone effect? Or have a link to an online tutorial?

Thanks in advance for any help on the subject!

--
No Silicon Heaven? Preposterous! Where would all the calculators go? - Kryten

(Edited by BlueHarvest on 09-26-2005 11:10)

Like this?: http://www.t-shirt-town.com/ProductImages/political-t-shirts/che-guevara-t-shirt.jpg

I think just upping the contrast a lot and maybe doing a simplification of edges or one of Photoshop's waterpaint/etc. filters would get you close.

It all depends on the inital image, and how far you want to go with it.

step 1 - desaturate.

step 2 - play with levels, threshold, gaussian blur.

once you get a decent start, it may be easier to throw in into a channel and work with it there.

you'll inevitably need to get your hands dirty - use the eraser and the paintbrush tools.

if all else fails, pull out the pen tool.

using DL's suggestions you might want to add posterize as well to seperate out some areas (blurring first helps a lot). I also agree that you're going to have to get our hands dirty at some point, it may very well be worth your time to just do a quick desaturate, blur, posterize then get to it with the pen tool straight away, you can spend a lot of time time fussing with sliders then realize you could have been done already if you'd started with the pen earlier

hmm I did something similar for the title header on my site.

I just took the image, set it to b&W and then busted the contrast up . Then I found a wand setting that worked to soften the edges and then started clicking around to get the areas.

Worked pretty well for me though my PS skills are pretty bad.



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

This is what I got after taking this image, upping its contrast (I think I did +127 in GIMP), and running it once through AutoTrace with the default settings:



Utilizing AutoTrace in a nondefault way or doing more toying in GIMP should make it even better. Some magic-wanding in GIMP before using AutoTrace would probably dramatically improve it.

(Edited by reisio on 09-26-2005 23:38)

Oh darn! You mean I'm actually going to have to work on it? ;-)

I've made some semi succesful attempts, but it requires quite a lot of fiddling. KPT's gaussian blur and level manipulation is what's worked the best for me in the past (although I haven't tried anything like this lately).

I've also toyed with the idea of importing a rasterized image into a vector program and outlining the curbes I want there. Food for thought.

Anyway, thank you for all your replies! I very much appreciate the feed back.

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No Silicon Heaven? Preposterous! Where would all the calculators go? - Kryten

Are you working with photographs you've taken yourself? One easy way is, when you're taking the photographs to turn off all the lights, and then shine a bright, focused studio light on the subject's face. This will give you the very defined edges that posterize/autotrace is going to pick up. The photo of Che Guevara is already rather high contrast, but photos, especially color ones, have a tendency to get muddled. A good black and white shot with the correct lighting should yield better results.

Hope that helps some.