Vector Art

Before we begin let me point the essential stuff you need to know for this tutorial. First, your images have to be large and with high resolution, because with small and low resolution images is nearly impossible to trace and have a good looking vector image. Second, we are going to use the pen tool every step of the way, every outline, every little thing you want to draw, the pen tool is going to be your friend, so you have to know the basics of this tool. And that's about it. So lets start. For this tutorial I have the image of Rihanna. You can find large, high-resolution images at www.skins.be

Open the photo you want to turn into vector. This photo is going to be your background layer. Create a new layer above your background layer, rename it to white background and fill it with white color. Turn the visibility on this layer off by clicking the eye next to it. Create a new layer above your white background layer and call it outlines. We are going to draw all the outlines from the image on to this layer. Lets do that. Make sure your brush has a 2 pixel diameter. Get the pen tool and start outlining the person on your photo. Hair, eyes, nose, mouth, ears, lips, clothes, detail on clothes, nails, eyebrows... After a long, long work, this is what you should have:

The next step is to color the image. You can take any color you want, or you can take the original colors from your image (eyedropper tool). OK, so lets start. Create a new layer below your outline layer (the outline layer will always be on top). We are going to color first, the skin, so call this layer skin color. This is what I do when I am coloring my art. I take the magnetic lasso tool, select the skin with it and fill it with my color, it saves you a lot of time. If something else is colored that's not the skin, just take the eraser tool and erase it. Next, create a new layer below your skin layer. Call this layer hair color and color the hair. Do this for every detail that you have outlined. This is what I have so far:

Now for the shadows and highlights. I know two ways how we can do this. The first one is, create a duplicate of the original image, in my case, just Rihanna, put it on top of the layer palete. Go Filter>Noise>Reduce Noise check the "Remove JPEG Artifact" box, play a little with the options until you are satisfied and click OK. Now put this layer in Overlay Mode. Save the image as JPEG file and open it in Illustrator. Once in there, select the image and choose Object>Live Trace>Tracing Options...and experiment with the options there. Once you finish, save the file as JPEG and open it once more in Photoshop and continue with your work......

Or, we can do this.On a new layer with your pen tool trace all the shadows. After you trace all the shadows trace all the highlights on a new layer. Color them with darker and lighter skin color. Do this for the hair, clothes, eyebrows,.....Bouth ways end up with the same result.

This is what I have now:

After this, its time for the background. You need some flower,grunge brushes to create a cool background. I am not going to explain this, because its very easy to do. All you need to know is, don't stop until you are satisfied and blend modes and opacity are your friends. Here is my final result: