Turn your Photo into a Pop Art Image

You might want to display some of your favorite photos in a unique way: as a pop art poster. It is easy to do with Paintshop Pro. Make sure you have a photo that has good contrast between the main subject and the background and you will be good to go.

Right-click on your image in the Layers palette and select Duplicate, to make sure you don’t alter your original photo. With the duplicate layer selected, turn your photo into a greyscale image using Adjust > Hue and Saturation > Colorize and set the Saturation to 0.

Increase the contrast with Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Brightness and Contrast to a point that still shows the main details. For this particular image, we used a Brightness setting of 0 and a Contrast setting of 75.

Now, you need to reduce the whole image to 3 well-defined levels of grey, which you will achieve with Effects > Artistic Effects > Contours with the following settings:

Now it is time to add some colors to make this image pop. Activate the Magic Wand; set the Match mode to RGB Value, Contiguous being unchecked and Anti-alias checked.

Then, select the area of the darkest grey.

Add a new Raster Layer. Choose a dark color in the Materials Palette. Use the Flood Fill tool to fill that selection with your chosen color.

Deselect by using Ctrl + D or Selections > Select None. Reactivate the initial layer with the grey image and use the Magic Wand to select the middle grey color with the same settings as before. Add a new Raster Layer. Choose a medium color and flood fill the selection with it.

Finally, repeat the process with the lighter grey area. And you now have a uniquely customized pop art poster of your favorite photo.