Cool Photo Effects: Create a Pop-Art Mosaic in Photoshop

6/23/15, 3:07 PMCool Photo Eects: Create A Pop-Art Mosaic In Photoshop

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How To Create A Pop-Art Mosaic in Photoshop

This is a fantastic trick for turning your digital photos into pop-art stylemosaics using Photoshop. It's a great way to produce creative, bold and fun designswithout spending hours in front of the computer!

I think it tends to work best with bright, colourful pictures. But that's not always thecase, and it can even be a cool way of processing monotone shots. This dotted mosaiceffect works well with all kinds of photos: landscapes, people, urban,architectural, flowers or wildlife!

Before:



After:

1. First up, choose an image to work on and open it in the Editor workspace ofPhotoshop.

2. Click on the 'Filter' menu. Go to 'Pixelate', which will bring up another menu, andchoose 'Mosaic'.

At this point a dialogue box will open and you need to enter a 'cell size' for the mosaic



squares. The best size to choose depends on both the size of the photo you're working onand the kind of final effect you want to achieve.

If it turns out you get it wrong first time, it will take about 30 seconds to go back andchange it! I'm working with a relatively large photo, so I've chosen a cell size of 70.Remember the number you input.

3. Now open a blank new page by going 'File' > 'New' > 'Blank File'. In the dialogue boxenter a height and width the same as the cell size for the mosaic you just chose. This is areally important part of this Photoshop trick!

Enter a resolution that matches the photo file.

4. Now for the interesting bit of this Photoshop trick! From the toolbar select theElliptical Marquee tool. (If it is hidden, click and hold on the Rectangular Marquee toolto bring up the other options).

Place the cross hairs in the top left corner of the blank square file and drag out a circle tofill the whole page. We need to delete this circle to leave just the corners remaining.



But there's a problem! The background layer is locked. So double click it in the layerspalette and hit 'OK' in the dialogue box that appears. This makes it a normal layer. Nowjust press backspace to delete your circle selection, or go Edit > Cut.

5. Go to the Edit menu and select 'Define Pattern' from the list. In the window thatappears give it a name - something like 'Dots 70px' - and hit OK.

6. Now we get to see what the point of all this is!

Return to the photo. Go Edit > Fill Layer.

A window appears with a heading 'Contents'. From the 'Use' drop down menu make sure'Pattern' is selected.

Now click the down arrow next to the 'Custom Pattern' menu. Your saved pattern, 'Dots70px' will appear alongside Photohop's custom ones. Select it and hit 'OK'.

Done! Your picture will now have the cool photo effects for a dotted mosaic applied!

You can create loads of cool photo effects with this nifty little trick. Play around with thesize of dots and colours of the corners (use the paint bucket tool to fill them in). Here are



some other examples:



Kelby Training is probably the best and most trusted source of online Photoshop education.

Cool Photo Effects: Create a Pop-Art Mosaic in Photoshop

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