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Many asked me how do I do the cartoon / plastic effect on faces. I always said it's all in combining High Pass filtering, Smudge tool and playing around with other tools to make the effect livelier. But still they asked "Yeah but show me your whole process" so instead of teaching everyone who asks me for the workflow, I've provided this tutorial for those who want to achieve the same effect.

Please bear with me that some steps might could be achieved easier with other tools and filtering, but this is how I discovered it while playing around with Photoshop and I'm able to do it very fast. So if you think that there are steps that can be taken easier than mine, please leave your comment at the bottom.

Note: This tutorial requires user's with at least intermediate level skills in Photoshop.





Please download the original photo from Katanaz-Stock: http://katanaz-stock.deviantart.com/art/Female-Stock-18-67382561

Credits are given to him for giving out his stock photo's for free.


1. Open the image in Photoshop, and make a copy of the background layer or press ctrl + J to duplicate. This serves for the purpose that we won't directly edit on the background layer so that during the whole process we'll always have a backup of the original image. Now press again ctrl + J and your layer properties should now have 2 copied layers and the background.

2. Start using the Smudge tool and set the strength to 10%. Smudge all around the face, shoulders, under the chin, except the hair; be careful on the shadows, edges and details of the face.

Smudge tool:





3. Next is to set the most upper layer to the blending mode Multiply. Now select the layer below it and go to your menu Image -> Adjustment -> Shadow/Highlight. Play a little around with the advance settings so that the image won't be too dark and having too many black areas.




4. Now select the most upper layer, and press ctrl + alt + shift + e, this should make a merged copy layer of what you've done so far at the top. Select that layer and press again ctrl + J. Press ctrl + U and the Hue / Saturation window should open up. Desaturate the image a little bit so it won't have this strong red / yellowish color. In the meanwhile you can also lighten up the eyes a bit by using the Dodge tool, for this image I used the following settings:

Range: Highlights

Exposure: 10%
Dodge tool:




5. Make another copy of that layer and select the most upper layer for editing. Go to Filter -> Other -> High Pass and play a little around with the settings. For this image I've used 8.0. Then select the upper layer again and set its blending to Soft Light. Use again the Dodge tool and dodge a little bit on the face.

6. Make another copy, set its blending mode to Linear Dodge and it's Fill to 10%. Go to Filter -> Other -> High Pass and set this time a much higher value to concentrate on the depth of the large details. During the process the face might get some rough details, so just play around again with the smudge and dodge tool. In case you might want to try to use also the Burn Tool which comes in handy for shadows and details.

Burn tool: