Creative Ways to Posterise Your Cat with Filters

I love using filters but, until now I have used filters in my smartphone, not within my photo editing software. Like you, I often wonder what the computer filters can do so join me while I posterise friend Thomas the cat and transform his portrait using a simple filter for wild results!

It all looks complicated, even if you regularly crop, or dodge and burn photographs. Join us for an adventure into a computer-generated cat selfie.

This is Thomas. He is a regular visit to the household and is welcomed by the cats almost as a member of the family!

Thanks to regular exposure to my DSLR Thomas is used to having his picture taken, and the sound of the shutter does not make him nervous.

Working With a Digital Photograph

I chose Tom’s photograph because it has simple shapes and I wanted to see how a single filter would change its look. You might want to try a simple shapes picture and a more complex one to see how the filter reacts.

I am using Affinity Photo and selected a filter called ‘Posterize’. When I selected the filter, a slider appeared on the screen that allowed me to adjust the effect of the filter. There may be other options in your filter so always explore and see what trouble you can get up to.

The first adjustment was quite small. It removed the colour and simplified the shapes of Tom and the background.

I moved the slider along a bit further and the results became more dramatic.

The effects are almost like a poster from the 1960’s with crude layers that could almost be a linocut. Tom’s eyes have become even brighter and the image definitely looks more dramatic.

Pushing the slider to its furthest extreme strips out a lot of shadows. It makes Tom look almost like a kitty alien.

His head is isolated and the background seems to be disintegrating around the strong central shape. All the focus is on the eyes and dark furred head now.

Do you have a photograph you can give a filter treatment too? Let me know in the comments.