For those who want to edit photos to use as backgrounds to save time or improve the appearance of their drawings,

and those who feel that AI will be regulated in the future and cannot be used in their works,

how about some last-ditch (possibly) knowledge and skills?

 

Note that this is not entirely my own original work, and reference sources have been used.

This technique requires the paid software Photoshop,

so I've managed to arrange it in my own way using Clip Studio Paint.

 

Here are the materials I have prepared.

It would be best to take the photo myself, but I borrowed it from Photock because I wanted to quote something that would make it look like an article like this.

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Well, the first thing to do is...

 

Get GIMP.

 

I'll say it again, get GIMP.

 

To be precise, as long as it's free image editing software that can use a filter plug-in called G'MIC, you can use Paint.net or Krita.

 

Then open an image.

I'll use Paint.net here, which starts up much faster. What about GIMP?

G'MIC is here.

 

I thought about doing that, but I decided to erase the sky first.

You can do it in Clip Studio Paint, but I personally find it easier to make the sky transparent this way.

Go to Colors → Color Grading to apply an HDR-like effect.

HDR is a photograph taken so that both bright and dark areas look beautiful,

but this effect gives an artificial appearance of that.

We'll also be reducing the color contrast later,

so turn up the Saturation at this point.

The sky is already transparent, so save it as a png.

Open it in Clip Studio Paint.

 

Now, reduce the resolution to about half the final result, then enlarge it again.

 

Then use strong smart smoothing.

You could also enlarge it with super resolution, but strong is not available, so you'll have to do it every time.

Then I add a layer and use a leaf-like brush

distributed with Clip Studio Paint Assets

to pick up color with the eyedropper and add more art-like details.

 

This process is easy thanks to the various creators who distribute brushes.

Thank you.

 

You don't have to do the additional smart smoothing, though.

 

I add this step because the leaves look kind of sickly and don't look like an illustration if I only use smart smoothing, but it's not necessary for a city of buildings.

Although I've omitted this, I'll add some finishing touches like background transparency here and there.

Then I merge the completed layers and make two copies.

One of them I extract lines → rasterize → convert brightness to transparency.

The other one I binarize → convert brightness to transparency.

I made the line drawing and shadow layers blue using the layer color,

and set them to multiply mode and 40% opacity.

It's starting to look more like an illustration.

Then duplicate the line art layer.

I usually set the opacity to 100% and use dark colors to make power lines stand out,

or add bright colors to the tops of trees to create a reflective look.

Using a layer mask makes this easy.

Also, if you make this line drawing layer a reference layer,

you can use an eraser that doesn't go beyond the edge to cleanly erase any sky that wasn't completely erased.

 

Now's the time to add a new sky.

 

Take a suitable photo, load it, rasterize it,

then shrink and enlarge it with smart smoothing.

 

Find a blue sky gradient map from the assets and apply it!

Then I apply various effects like this to give it an anime background feel.

I use Light Comparison to create an aerial perspective.

 

You can see that the contrast drops considerably.

I anticipated this so I increased the saturation with the HDR effect first.

So I just added some light and hid the remaining rough parts, and it was finished.

It took me 2 hours the first time I tried, but once you get used to it, you can do it in about 30 minutes.

Thank you for joining us.

Good job.

P.S.

It seems that G'MIC also allows online editing.

Of course, HDR processing is also possible with Color Grading.