Black and white vector with highlights

In this tutorial you will learn how to easily create a black and white vector with highlights from a photograph. Let’s start!

Open up the image from what you want to make a vector. I will use this one i took some weeks ago:

Next, duplicate (Control + J) Background layer and save the PSD with a different name than the photo. Change the name of the new layer to: “vector”.

Now go to Filter > Artistic > Cutout, play with the settings being (the lowest setting):
Number of levels: 3.
Edge simplicity: 0.
Edge fidelity: 3.

You should get something like this, as for the details (remember you need the mayor highlights).

Now, you must extract the object from the rest of the photograph. Do this with the Pen Tool and help yourself with lowering the opacity of the “vector layer” so you can see through it and have the Backgound layer as a guide.

When you finally have the selection, make a new layer with the extracted object and name it “object”, you should get something like this.

I changed the object’s (airplane) color to white (with Blending Options > Color Overlay) so you could see it but change it to black. In the “vector” layer you can see the highlights of the object, now put “object” layer over “vector” if you dont have it like this and with the Pen Tool select the highlighted parts of the object that appear in the “vector” layer. Start selecting the highlighted parts of the object and fill one by one in a new layer, after this you should get something like this:

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