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Woodcut Effect

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by JuliannaKunstler.com

Woodcut—formally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood.

Block-cutter at work. Woodcut by Jost Amman, 1568.

Woodcut first appeared in ancient China, but has been widely practiced in Japan and Europe.

Odawara-juku in the 1830s, as depicted by
Hiroshige in his series
The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō.

You are going to imitate the look of a woodcut. Depending on the picture you use, the settings might vary.

Below are two images: the original photo and the same photo with a woodcut effect.

GALLERY

STEPS

Open the file in Photoshop.

Duplicate the layer

Filter > Other > High Pass

Set the radius as shown.

Image > Adjustments > Threshold

All midtones are removed.

Drag the slider to 118 (this number varies)

Change the Layer mode to Multiply

This is what it looks now.

You can stop here or adjust the colors a little. never hurts to try different things.

Select the original layer

Apply an adjustment Hue/Saturation layer.

Drag the Saturation slider to left if you want to tone down the colors.

OK

Select the original layer again and apply a filter to soften the colors:

Filter > Noise > Median

Here is a close up of the final image.

Experiment!

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