The first thing is choosing the photo. You can download the photo we’ll use in this tutorial here. Of course you can use any other image if you wish, but there are a few points to keep in mind. First of all, the settings of the filters we’ll use in this tutorial depends on the image size, so using smaller or larger images will end up with different results. Second, you can play around with the settings when applying filters, according to the image you’re using. Now open the image you’ve downloaded.
Duplicate the "Background" layer and name it "Overlay". Go to Filter > Artistic > Cutout and use these settings: Number of Levels => 8, Edge Simplicity => 5 and Edge Fidelity => 1. Make the "Overlay" layer invisible for now.
Duplicate the "Background" layer (Command+J) two more times. Name these two copies as "Relief" and "Color". Make sure the "Relief" layer is below the "Color" layer. Select the "Relief" layer in the Layers Palette, set Foreground Color to black, set Background Color to white. Go to Filter > Sketch > Bas Relief. Use these settings: Detail => 12, Smoothness => 4, Light => Left. Set Blending Mode of "Color" layer to Color. Select both "Color" and "Relief" layers and hit Command+E to merge.
Go to Filter > Artistic > Cutout and use these settings: Number of Levels => 8, Edge Simplicity => 6, Edge Fidelity => 1. Go to Layers Palette, make "Overlay" layer visible and set the Blending Mode of "Overlay" layer to, you know, Overlay. If you’re wondering why did we apply a Bas Relief filter in the previous step, you can compare the bottom images. Also keep in mind that applying different filters instead of Bas Relief at this step is worth giving a shot.
Well, this is the end of this short tutorial. I hope you found this technique useful and had fun.
Here are some other examples to give you an idea how this technique works with different images.
Content source : PsAwesome