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How Do You Posterize an Image in Photoshop?

Last updated on September 24, 2022 @ 1:42 pm

Posterization is the process of reducing an image to a limited number of tones, usually to separate areas of color or shades of gray. It’s a popular effect used in both photography and graphic design, and it’s relatively easy to achieve in Photoshop. Here’s how.

First, open your image in Photoshop and duplicate the layer. Next, go to Image > Adjustments > Posterize.

In the dialog box that appears, enter a value between 2 and 10 to see how it affects your image. For this example, we’ll use 4.

Now go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels. In the Levels dialog box, drag the middle slider to the right until you start to see some clipping in the highlights and shadows of your image. The amount you need to move the slider will vary depending on your image.

Finally, go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation. Check the Colorize box and play around with the Hue and Saturation sliders until you get an effect you like. You can also experiment with different blending modes for this layer.

And that’s it! With just a few simple steps, you can posterize an image in Photoshop.

PRO TIP: Posterization is a form of image distortion that can occur when an image is converted from one color depth to another. When an image is posterized, its colors are reduced to a limited palette, which can cause banding and other artifacts.

To avoid posterization, it’s important to convert images to the correct color depth before converting them to another format. When working with images in Photoshop, you can posterize an image by going to Image > Mode > Posterize.

Drew Clemente

Drew Clemente

Devops & Sysadmin engineer. I basically build infrastructure online.