A graphic novel effect to be precise. If you followed the Comic Book Panel in 5 Minutes tutorial, than this is along similar (although a little grungier) lines. Part one of this tutorial uses only the helicopter photograph, part two adds in the aerial city shot.





Both images were downloaded from stock.xchng. The photographers profiles can be found by following these links; Arian Kulp - aerial city shot. Donald Champion - helicopter photograph.   

Let's start by opening the helicopter image in Photoshop and renaming the "background" layer to something more meaningful (double-click the layer title). Now create a new layer, fill it with solid white using the paint bucket tool and drag this layer below the one containing the helicopter image. You should now have something like this in your Layers palette:




The next step is to create a curves adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves) and create an "s-curve" similar to the one below. This will give the image more contrast. Adjustment layers are a great way of fine-tuning an image without making any modifications to the original - as its name suggests, it is a tool for making adjustments to any layers which sit below it in the Layers palette. Try switching off the adjustment layer by clicking the eye icon on its left and you will see the helicopter return to its previous appearance.




Now we need to give the rotor blades the illusion of movement. To achieve this we will use the Lasoo tool and a little motion blur, but firstly we need to create a copy of the original helicopter image. Right-click on the helicopter layer  choose Duplicate Layer and then drag the copy above the curves adjustment layer in the palette.

Starting with the left side of the main rotor, select the top half and a small block of sky directly above it. Next choose Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. Try to imagine the rotors spinning and adjust the blur angle until you get the desired effect. Repeat this step for the remaining three blades. 







Next is the step that makes the most noticable difference to the image - the Fresco filter (Filter > Artistic > Fresco). The key to getting a nice effect from this filter seems to be a) working with high resolution images (the original helicopter image was roughly 3000 x 1700 pixels) and b) keeping Brush Size low and Brush Detail high.

Play around with the sliders until you are happy with the results. The final step is to drop the opacity of this layer down to around 80%  in the layers palette. You should now have something that looks like this:






Well that's all for part one. In part two we'll add in a aerial cityscape as a background and make use of layer masks. As always, the Photoshop document for this tutorial can be found in the downloads section here.

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