This guide will teach you how to use Clip Studio Paint's Artistic Filters to turn a photo into a toned comic background.

Photo

For this guide, I used a photo of a church building that I want to turn into a comic background. Make sure any photos you use for your comic backgrounds are public domain or owned by you!

To turn the photo black and white, go to Edit > Tonal Correction > Hue/Saturation/Luminosity and set the Saturation value to -100.

You can adjust the levels of the image by going to Edit > Tonal Correction > Level Correction . This lets you make the lightest colors brighter and the darkest colors darker.

Once you have your photo adjusted, duplicate the layer so there are two. Select the top layer before going to the next step.

Artistic Filter - Lines Only

Go to Filter > Effect > Artistic to open the Artistic Filter window. Set the Process to Lines Only and make sure you have Preview checked so you can tweak the lineart to your liking.

 

I recommend setting the Line anti-aliasing to a very low number to help with later steps.

Click OK and your layer will become lineart!

 

This lineart is still a little messy, so now we can use Vector Layers to clean it up a bit and adjust the lines.

With your lineart layer selected, go to Layer > Convert Layer and change it from Raster to Vector layer.

To erase any messy areas, make sure you have a Hard eraser with the "Vector eraser" box checked in its tool settings.

Now you can easily clean up wherever there are loose dots.

To make the lineart match the rest of your comic, you can change the brush shape used by the vector layer.

 

With your vector layer selected, click the Object tool under the Operation subset and go to the Tool Properties window.

Click the Brush Shape dropdown and select the type of brush you want the lineart to use. The lineart will then change to match your selection.

 

You can also change the width of the lineart by changing the Brush size setting above.

Now my lineart matches the rest of my comic!

Artistic Filter - Colors Only

Now select your second layer. I recommend hiding the visibility of your lineart layer for now.

Go to Filter > Effect > Artistic to open the Artistic Filter window. Set the Process to Colors Only and make sure you have Preview checked so you can tweak it.

 

For toning, I recommend limiting the number of colors to 3 or 4.

Now your photo will be turned into areas of solid color in black, gray, and white.

To turn your colors into manga tone, open the Layer Property window and click the Tone button.

Adjust the settings of the tone to your liking.

And with that, your toned comic background is complete!

I hope this guide was helpful!