I had sweated over a similar style piece for an NFT project earlier in the year.

Fortunately for me Ai generated imagery, in this instance, didn’t deliver. As a result I was asked by Thick Boy Records to produce a remarkably ‘off-brand’ piece of artwork for the up-coming release. It was stipulated by the artist that the design needed to have an Anime / retro / Manga style look and feel. I had sweated over a similar style piece for an NFT project earlier in the year (image at the bottom of page). The combination of techniques and effects were already acquired. It was merely a case of finding the correct image for the effects to work.

Rarely, is this resource used in my workflow. Before the days of Smart Objects…

I had been looking for a long time for a set of effects that could create a LoFi style image within Photoshop. Nothing I found online really generated the look I needed. So, I delved deep into my old friend, Photoshop Filter gallery. Rarely, is this resource used in my workflow. Before the days of Smart Objects were the more familiar route of ‘destructive’ image editing. You would work with a raster graphic gradually building it in a way you hoped would be satisfactory, saving an array of versions along the way.

The secret in achieving the LoFi look is

Having built the image above from a plethora of smart objects, I was able to access the filters, insert a new image and tweak to the recommended output. The image required some steps to prep it beforehand. The secret in achieving the LoFi look is you have to degrade the image in a range of steps such as blurring, clipping the highs and lows, pushing the mids and desaturating various areas ready for colour grading.