A colleague from overseas brought in a box of treats as a gift to the employees at Verbatim today. As I was making my morning coffee, I overheard two of my colleagues talking excitedly about a box of wasabi-flavoured chocolates.

“Wasabi-flavoured… chocolates?” Weird, I thought.

I took a closer look and using whatever limited knowledge in my ability to read chinese (or kanji), I deciphered the word “tea” on the packaging.

Green tea flavoured chocolate actually made more sense.

It tasted just like a Green Tea latte – one of my favourite drinks to get at Starbucks – infused into a KitKat.

Not bad, I must say. If you’re a KitKat lover, and also love green tea, then this is a definite must try!

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In this simple tutorial, I’m going to show you how to transform any regular photo into a vector image of your liking. Take the above image for example, I have transformed my head into a vector image which I use as an avatar in many different forums and message boards.

I will be using Adobe Photoshop CS3 for this tutorial, but the concepts are very basic and different illustrative platforms can be used to achieve this effect.

Step One

Select the photograph of your choice. Open it up in photoshop. The larger the resolution of your image, the easier it is to detail the end product.

Create a new layer by right-clicking the background layer and selecting Layer from Background. Once new layer is created, rename the layer Photograph and delete the existing background image.

Step Two

Create a new layer called Face. Using the Polygonal Lasso Tool, carefully outline the edges of your face.

 

 

Using the Paint Bucket Tool, select a color that closely resembles your skin tone as the foreground color and fill the selected space.

 

 

Step Three

You can disable the visibility of a layer by clicking on the “eye” icon on the left of the layer. Disable the visibility of the Face layer.

 

 

Now with the Face layer disabled, you are able to vectorize the next layer according to the original image.

Create a new layer called Hair. Using the Polygonal Lasso Tool again, carefully outline the edges of your hair.

Again using the Paint Bucket Tool, fill in the selected area with a color that closely resembles the color of your hair.

 

 

As you can see, the bottom section of the hairline is overfilled. Because we have already created a Face layer, we will move the Face layer above the Hair layer to overlap the two vectors accordingly.

 

 

Step Four

Repeat the same process with the rest of the photo that you would like to vectorise. Create smaller vectors for indents in the facial structure and color them accordingly. I find that going vertically down the Y-Axis of the color picker achieves better shaded quality than moving the color picker across the entire map to find a suitable color.

Below is a step-by-step image guide of the layers I used for the vector above.

 

 

Step Five

You’re vector will start to look fuller after adding multiple layers. Once you are completely satisfied with the amount of layers and detail in the vectors, it is time to move onto Light & Shade.

The same concept applies to the light and shade. Using the Polygonal Lasso Tool, select the shaded region and fill in the darker tone – and vice versa for the light.

The major difference is that instead of stopping after filling in your solid tone, you continue adding detail by smudging the shades of color using the Smudge Tool.

 

 

Choose your brush size accordingly. Make sure its not too big so its doesn’t look sparse, and make sure it isn’t too small or you’ll end up spending hours smudging it out.

I’ve set the smudge strength to 20%. You should be able to find these options in the tool bar above the image.

 

 

Make sure you smudge the selection outwards to create a dissolving effect. Also make sure the appropriate layer is selected before you smudge.

 

Step 6

You’re vector is almost complete! At this stage, make sure you save your artwork in *.psd format so you are able to tweak it in the future.

After saving the image, we will now attempt to flatten all the layers of the image.

First selecting the top most layer (in this case called Light), hold shift and scroll down the layers until you hit the layer just above the Photograph layer.

 

 

Right-click on the selected laters and click on Merge Layers.

All the vectorised layers will merge into one main layer. You can now move the entire vector image as a whole using the Move Tool.

 

Step 7

Disable the visibility of the background (Photograph) layer and crop the vector image to the size of your liking.

 

Congratulations! You have created your vector image!

 

 

If you have any questions or would like further assistance, just leave a comment in the comment section below and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can!

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Every now and again, I would come home to the sight of a fat furry black cat sitting in the driveway, always wishing I had the chance to actually pat it. But as soon as I get close enough, it would jolt away like a roadrunner going beep beep.

Two days ago I managed to whip out my phone and actually get a picture of it.

As a dog-lover, I’m usually never awe struck by cats. But this specific cat comes across as such a majestic creature, my eyes are always binded by its beauty.

But much to my avail, I still hadn’t manage to get close enough to pat it.

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Gwenda and I having a bit of a “jam” while rehearsing for our next gig. We randomly came across Disney’s Tangled while trying to brainstorm new ideas. After a few test runs, we started up the webcam and walah!

Hehe… hope you enjoy it!

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Make-up is to girls, and the hair is to guys. I’ve been told this numerous times, and funny as it is, its true.

Think about it. Guys don’t have make-up to put on unless they’re willing to look like drag-queens, so the only sense of vanity is their hair.

From the long-haired to the bald, guys tend to change their hairstyles more often than girls. Basically, guys have more versatility with their hair than girls do.

Well, that is how I see it anyway.

For me, the worst part about the hair is the in-between stages. The part when its neither long nor short.

It’s not long enough to count it as fashionably cool. Nor is it short enough to style it nicely.

There’s a big difference between styled hair and unstyled hair.

I’ve got thick bushy hair sprouting from the top of my head. When I go to the hairdressers, the barber would always leave a remark (or complain) that I have too much hair, and that it takes twice as long to cut it compared to other people.

It’s easy to tell when I’ve reached the in-between stage of my hair. You’ll just see me with a cap all the time, especially when I’m out of the house.

I’ll go to classes with a cap. Lunch with a cap.

Public transport with a cap.

Dinner with a cap.

Sports with a cap. Gym with a cap. Beach with a cap.

Driving with a cap. Having coffee with a cap.

Karaoke with a cap. On the phone with a cap.

Even clubbing with a cap.

Partying with a cap. At home with friends with a cap.

Not forgetting to mention cooking with a cap.

Over time, it may even seem that the cap has slowly fused into my hair follicles and has actually become my hair.

The problem lies with it being in Melbourne. Decent haircuts cost AUD$30 per cut, which is approximately RM80.

RM80 for I freakin’ haircut is a LOT of money! Think about all the kon lao mian I could have!

So I stick with the cap.

The only time I take it off, is when I get home and I’m alone. Alone from the frantic insecurities of others looking at my ugly head of bushy black stuff.

When I leave the house with a cap, I never take it off. Wanna know why?

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Cause hat hair is 10x worse than the in-between stages of my hair.

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