One of the most important aspects of manga that greatly enhances the effect is the background. In this tutorial I will teach you an extremely simple method of achieving a great manga style background. This tutorial is relatively simple and only some basic knowledge of Photoshop will be necessary. Below is the result you should be able to achieve in under ten minutes.

Open a new document (file -> new or ctrl + n). The document will need to be relatively large, I’m using 3000 pixels wide and a height of 3000 pixels. Also ensure that the document is grayscale.

Next go to filter -> Render -> Difference Clouds.

Continue repeating this filter (the shortcut is ctrl + F). After about the tenth or so time you should get something similar to mine:

To create the lines we will be using the pinch filter (Filter -> Distort -> Pinch)

In the popup set the amount to 100% and press ok.

Once again you must repeat this filter (ctrl + F). You should notice the lines get longer and cleared each time you repeat the pinch filter.

I repeated mine about ten times to get the following result.

Next go to the brightness and contrast tool (Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Brightness and Contrast).

When you click on this a new window should open up titled “New Layer”, just press ok. Now another window should appear.

In this window use the following settings:

Brightness: +100
Contrast: +100 (you may wish to use a different setting for this, depending on the result you wish to achieve)

Press ok. Now your document should look something similar to mine:

Your result probably doesn’t look all that great at the moment, so next we must remove all of the unwanted parts of your picture. Find a section of your document that you think looks good and select the crop tool (shortcut: C). Now click and hold on your document and select the area of your document you wish to use.
This is the result I got after cropping my image:

That’s pretty much the end of the tutorial, all that’s left to do now is add a picture of your favorite manga character and your done.

Here’s my finished result: