Low-Poly Portrait

Open portrait in Photoshop

Crop if necessary

Set image size so we are working with a nice big image... Image - Image Size - change PPI to 300, then change the width or height to 6000 pixels

because we will be creating many triangles for our portrait, we want to be able to see a grid that we can work with

View - Show - Grid

by default the grid in photoshop is split into 16 blocks per 1 inch section, we want to get a little more detailed than that

Photoshop CC - Preferences - Guides, Grid & Slices

We are going to change the Subdivisions to 8

We are now ready to get started selecting areas and changing sections to solid (general) colors

Using the Polygonal Lasso tool select a triangular area, try to stay on the corners of your grid to avoid spaces later on (you will probably want to zoom in on your portrait to do this)

Copy and Paste this triangle to a new layer

hold the command key and click on the thumbnail of the new layer to select the newly pasted triangle

go to Filter - Blur - Average (this takes all the colors in the triangle and gives them a single average color)

because of the number of steps involved in this procedure, we are going to set up an action to help automate the process

Click on your background layer and select your next triangle, then head to Window Actions, Click on the create new action button, give the action a name, and set a Function Key, I used F5 because I know that isn't tied to any other actions in Photoshop.

Click Record

Once again, copy and paste your selection to a new layer, hold command and click on the layer thumbnail, go to Filter - Blur - Average, click on your background layer and click on stop recording

When you are finished, your action should look like the picture below

Now all you need to do is make your triangular selections and hit F5 to create the averaged triangle layers. This should make to process much faster for you! If you ever make a triangle you don't like, you can delete the layer that it belongs to. Smaller details will require smaller triangles (eyes, nose, mouth, etc.) Lager areas can use larger triangles (forehead, cheeks, hair, etc.)

As you are finishing up, there are a few things we need to do to finalize our design...

First hide your background (original image layer)

select any of you other layers, then merge visible layers....two ways to do this

1. two finger click on a layer and select "Merge Visible"

2. Layer - Merge Visible

Next we are going to create a Gradient background for our image

First create a new layer and bring it to the bottom of you layers window

select the Gradient Tool

Next we will choose two colors for our gradient, I usually use a light color from my image and a dark color from the image.

Double click on the foreground color, use the color picker to choose a light color from your image.

Double click on the background color, use the color picker to choose a dark color from you image.

From the top toolbar, click on the down arrow next to the colors, click the down arrow next to Basics, choose your color gradient

From the top toolbar, choose the "Radial Gradient"

From the center of your image, drag the gradient tool out, you will see the background being created. Drag this out a little or as far as you'd like.

Save it, turn it in