Help with posterizing pic?

[griffey]

Hello all!

This is a pic of Indiana, our former best dog who passed away last week. My daughter and I are putting together a small memorial for her, and I wanted to etch the photo onto a tile because I could easily make it weatherproof. But to do so well and hit it with some black paint, I need to get it posterized properly.

I’m pretty good with photoshop and illustrator, but I’m having a heck of a time getting this photo to “posterize” properly. What I want to accomplish is to etch into white tile, then paint/wipe to get black lines…so the more “line art” the better, and just b/w (no grays). I’ve tried a few things in photoshop, and have had horrible results…

Thanks for any tips/tricks/tutorials you could throw at me.

[davidgal2]

First I would remove the background. Convert to black and white. Next I would accent the whites, and lastly sharpen it a little more.

[Jules]

@davidgal2 has done several really wonderful pet tiles, so what he said. (And I’m sorry for your loss.)

[geek2nurse]

This tutorial might be helpful: Prepare photo for engraving tutorial

[cynd11]

I’m so sorry about your dog—it’s really heart wrenching to lose a pet. I hope your project comes out well.

[ChristyM]

If you’re in a time pinch, I find Imaengine (an iOS app) does a nice job of posterizing quickly and easily. I use it on my iPad. You may have to clean up some paths with it… I was using it for the Silhouette so that wasn’t an issue. I haven’t found one that works quite as well on Android yet, although Adobe Capture sometimes gives me the results I want.