: What is this kind of effect called and how can I learn it? I really want to learn how to do these sort of illustrations but don't know what the effect is called in order to search on the

@Sarah814

The discussion revealed that you are a starter. Continue reading, if you need something soon, cannot buy it, but consider possible to use a photo, if it


can have extreme contrast like your example
is transferred to vector format


At first have a photo that is not full of fine high contrast texture, but preferably has large nearly flat colored areas. If thatlike nearly ready photo is not available, remove at least the background and convert the image to greyscale in a photo editor. The following screenshot is from Photoshop:



Note that I have added 2 extra layers as test backgrouds. One grey and one white. They are useful soon.

Select in the color selector White to your foreground color and black to your background color. Goto Image > Adjustments > Treshold and adjust the slider for good balance of black and white:



A closer look reveals this is full of fine detail, but that is difficult to avoid. The hair must be blackened because a great part of it is white and will disappear if the background also is white.



The image is good to check against both backgrounds.

Now it's time to vectorize the image. It can be traced in illustrator or Inkscape. Add the grey background and flatten the image, save and open in illustrator. You can also cut and paste.

In illustrator goto Object > Live Trace > Tracing Options. There set trace to greyscale with 3 levels. Preview allows checking what the controls do. When you're happy, trace. Goto Object > Live Trace > Make



The idea of the grey background is to keep it separate from the rest of image. Now its possible still to change the colors. We do not get complex here, we remove the whole background. We also remove all white and give to the black shape a new color fill:

Select the tracing result, goto


Object > Live Trace > Expand
Ofject > Ungroup
Object > Compound Path > Release


Select All, Goto Window > Pahfinder > Divide. That removes all overlapping parts and leave only the topmost. Without it there were black behind nearly all white parts.

Goto Object > Ungroup to free the division for edits. Select the grey part and delete it. Select one white part, then goto Select > Same Fill Color and press DEL to delete all white parts. The black remains.

Here the black parts are grouped and filled with a gradient.


Grey background is useless if you need only the black shape as we did and allow the white parts and the background to unite in the vectorization. Treshold operation in Photoshop is useful in that case, too because you can see, if something important is going to be at the wrong side of the border of black and white. We fixed the hair.

The same can be done much easier and even with somehow better results, if the skin defects and wrinkles are boosted (Warning: This filter can be hazardous to your health):



The overall contrast can be lower which gives generously more control what will be black.

The image is copied and pasted to Inkscape and Path > Trace bitmap is applied:



Finally the black is changed to a gradient:

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