So lets get started right away with Constellations. I thought it would be cool to "cartoonize" a photo for a layout with this kit.
First open up a new file 12" x 12" at 300 ppi and transparent background. Then find a photo that you would like to use and open that up too.
I am hoping that Tricia, Brenda, Kay and Karen will not mind me using this cute photo of the four of them which I found the other day!
Anyway, drag the photo onto the blank layout and close the original.
With most photos you will want to increase the overall contrast; go to Image>Adjustment>levels and using the input levels sliders, adjust to your liking. For this I used 25 for the black, 1.13 for the grey and 220 for the white.
You want to end up with a strong contrast but not too dark.
Now we are going to add some film grain to the photo. Go to Filters>Filter gallery>artistic>film grain. For this I used grain at 5, highlight area at 0 and intensity at 10. Hit OK. Then duplicate the layer twice.
Rename the second layer to Screen and use the blend mode of screen also.
Rename the third layer halftone and apply a half tone pattern to this layer. Go to Filter>Pixellate>Color halftone
Set the max radius to 4 and leave everything else at default and hit OK. Set the blend mode of the third layer to darken and hit ok.
Here you can see that the graininess of a newspaper cartoon has magically happened.
Now go to layers>merge visible and you have your cartoonized photo ready to be used in a layout.
I added a stroke to the outside of the photo also.
Now for the completed layout using this cartoonized photo. I used two papers, an embellishment overlay and stamp from Constellations. The balloon came from Comics.
I do hope you like what I have done here and will consider using cartoonization in the future. If your photo is not quite what you expected or is slightly blurry this is a wonderful solution to enable you to use it.
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