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Photoshop Pro: Create A Retro Pop Art Girl

You should try this! Learn how to turn a photograph into a psychedelic artwork…Pop Art style. Come transform yourself or friends into pop art stars instantly.

Before & After

Step 1 Open image in Photoshop then duplicate the layer. Let’s call this layer “Girl”. Image ID:4712105 © Daniel Sroga 123RF.com

Now, we need to extract the girl out of the background. Apply the Magic Tool (W) to select the red area.

Go to Select>Feather. Set feather radius to 2 – this will soften the edge of the selected area. Then, delete the selected background.


Step 2 Desaturate “Girl”. Go to Image>Adjustments>Desaturate. Adjust saturation to the max at 100.

Then, go to Image>Adjustments>Threshold, and set the level to 110. (Note: You will need to experiment a bit here to see which threshold settings works for your image).

Next, i applied Gaussian Blur to the image because the earlier Threshold settings will cause the image to appear jagged. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. I set my radius to 1 pixel.

Step 3 I’m going to enhance the ‘pop’ look by adding dots for some uber cool effect. On the “Girl” layer, right-click mouse (PC user) / hold down the Ctrl-key and click on mouse (Mac user), duplicate it and set the document’s destination to New.

Now we will have 2 documents in Photoshop: Pop Art Girl (original file) and New. Let’s focus on New for the moment.



Change the Mode to Grayscale (Go to Image > Mode > Grayscale). Next, again we go toImage but this time, select Bitmap.

Choose Halftone Screen on the Bitmap options window.

These are my settings…

The result will be like this…

Step 4  Switch the image Mode back to RGB (Go to Image>Mode>Grayscale, make sure the size ratio is 1. Then change the mode back to RGB).

Next, transfer this edited image back to the original document. Just like what we did earlier, right-click mouse (PC user) / hold down the Ctrl-key and click on mouse (Mac user). Select Duplicate Layer, and the Destination Document should be my original Photoshop document – Pop Art Girl.


Create Clipping Mask, so that the edited “Background copy” layer only affects “Girl” layer and not the “Background” layer. Merge Down the layers.


Step 5 Duplicate the “Background” layer i.e. “Background copy 2”. Drag it to the top of the layers.

Go to “Background copy” layer, hold down the Ctrl-key and click on the layer to select the shape of the girl.

Next, return to “Background copy 2” and click the vector mask icon situated at the bottom of the Layers pallete (I’ve mark the icon below). This helps bring out the skin color. Play with the opacity – I set mine to 55%.


Step 6 Now for the last part – the background. Create a blank layer (I named it “Color”) and place it below “Background copy 2” layer. Then, I added in some funky colors that I like using theBrush (B) tool.

Go to Filter>Pixelate>Color Halftone. You may follow my settings below; but feel free to play around with the settings until you like what you see.

You will get this:

Duplicate the “Color” layer. On this “Color copy” layer, change Blend Mode to Luminosity. 

Transform or twist “Color copy” layer to create another halftone pattern effect.

Lastly, flatten the image 🙂 Done.


p.s : You are always welcomed to make some adjustments of your own to get better results. I did some enhancements to this image.

Let’s disco, baby!

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