Sin City Like Photoshop Effect?

[rmh159]

I'm wondering if anyone knows of a tutorial online to get this type of effect for a city scape.

http://www.ronlim.com/worldarchive/sincity.jpg

If you take the people out of the shot you see how the buildings are REALLY high in contrast and either pure black or pure white? Would it be as easy as desaturating an image and then messing with levels?

 

[BYoung]

I have no clue how it could be done, but I'm interested in the responses to see if it is possible. I wouldn't mind turning a few of my pictures into something like this

I mean you could draw your own cityscape for a background like this because thats how it was done. I don't know where to start turning a color or B&W photo into this.

 

[Arch]

Would it be as easy as desaturating an image and then messing with levels?

It can be yes... depending on the orginal capture and the lighting.
To get something similar to this illustration type effect you could probably use a few different b+w techniques and layer masks along with a high pass filter.

One thing you could do if you have an your own city scape image is to post it in the PS challenges section and see what people can come up with

 

[Mullen]

I used Filter Forge's tricolor filter for these, it would probably look closer to that if I took the time to color in the black spots on the body.

 

[gtwosaints]

Here I found this tutorial: http://photoshop-tutorials.deviantart.com/art/Sin-City-Look-R-33274560

 

[BYoung]

Nice find gtwosaints! I'm going to have to give this a try someday soon. Thanks for the link.