Photo to pencil sketch
You can get a very good pencil sketch effect from Photoshop. You have to first open the image to be worked on, in Photoshop:
If you want to crop or resize it, you can do it now. For a coloured photo, go to Image and then select adjustments and then choose desaturate:
This will remove all the colour from your image but if you are using a black and white photo, then this step is not required.
Now duplicate layer by pressing Ctrl +J or by dragging the photo to the new layers icon in the layer palette. Now, go to image and then choose adjustments, but this time choose Invert:
This will invert the colours and the image will now look like the negative of a photo. Now, you need to change the duplicate layer’s blending mode to colour dodge from the layers palette:
The dodging tool lightens the layer which is lying beneath the selected layer. So, after this step, the image will be nearly white. Select the duplicate layer and go to filter and choose blur and then Gaussian blur:
Here, set radius at 4 pixels. It depends on you, because as you will blur, the image will begin to appear. One can apply, motion blur, radial blur also; it largely depends on the picture. Click on preview and then click ok
Now, with duplicated layer selected, go to images and then select adjustment and lastly levels:
In the levels dialog box, make changes like this; channel to RGB; in input level boxes, write 17, 1.05, 255 and in output level boxes, 255. Duplicate the first layer, which is the background layer, by pressing Ctrl +J. Place this new layer on the top of the stack:
Change the blending options of this layer to soft light and you will get the desired result.
Original Authors: Siva
Edit Update Authors: M.A.Harris
Updated On: 27/04/2009
