How To Create an Illustrated Cartoon Effect from a Photo in Adobe Photoshop

It takes some real skill to draw realistic characters and portraits, but there's a shortcut you can take by processing a photograph with various filters in Photoshop to give it a cartoon-like illustrated effect. In today's tutorial I'll show you a cocktail of adjustments that mimic the outlines, colours, and shading of a digitally painted image automatically, without the need to trace, paint or draw by hand.

This effect can be applied to any image to transform a real photograph into an illustrated cartoon graphic. All the Photoshop filters that are used each play an important role in smoothing out the details, outlining edges and creating colourful shading effects to achieve a bold art style.