[dylan604]

Lots of layers and lots of mattes. You take any picture of a person, and matte them out of the background. You then find a background you like, and arrange as you see fit. You then find whatever hair style you like, and matte it in as well. Plenty of other filters involved as well. Hell, you can even play with this stuff in Illustrator to get the "painted" look by converting to vectors.

How many magazine covers do you see and actually believe that was anything close to what the original image looked like? I have no idea how long this thing takes, but I'm guessing it's helluva lot faster than a person in PS, and it will be doable with anybody with zero amount of talent required.

To think it couldn't be done in PS is just lack of knowing good PS artists.

[barbazoo]

Ok, so it's more than just "pretty basic Photoshop filters" like OP suggested.

[dylan604]

Well, they just said it looks like basic filters, and to an extent they are not wrong. PS has had filters that give a "paint" look/feel to it, and they would still be useful to do this in PS. They didn't say that's all that would be needed. Those filters are basic filters in PS as they are included and not 3rd party separate purchases.

Your interpretation of the original comment into saying it was simple is a bit skewed