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Photoshop Picture to Sketch

Photoshop is really a very powerful program to do almost whatever you want with your images, but you have to use many of its tools together to get the effect that you want. Learn how to change a picture to a sketch in easy steps.

1. Choose a picture that will look good when turned into a sketch, either a landscape or a portrait.
   
2. Duplicate the background layer by selecting it in the layers window and pressing (Ctrl+J) so you can revert to the original if you did not like the result.
3. Select the new layer and click Filter > Sharpen.
4. Press (Ctrl+Shift+U) to turn the layer into black and white.
5. Click Filter > Other > High Pass, the value you enter for radius depends on your image. Try to choose a value while watching your image so you do not have neither too much gray nor too much white in the picture, notice that the value you choose here has much effect on your final result.
   
6. Click Filter > Sketch > Graphic Pen. Play with the "Stroke Length" and "Light/Dark Balance" until you get good results. I have chosen 15 for "Stroke Length ", 40 for "Light/Dark Balance" and "Right Diagonal" for "Stroke Direction".
   

The Sketch:

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6 Comments

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Digi Said,

Sat, 12 January 2008 11:06am (GMT)

I have tried this, with CS3, but when to apply Graphic pen, the picture is all white. Other filters work, but not this one. What could be the problem?

TutorialsRoom Said,

Sat, 12 January 2008 18:06pm (GMT)

Try to set foreground color to white and background color to black (simply press D) before applying the filter.

questionanswered Said,

Sun, 17 February 2008 09:43am (GMT)

thanks for asking that question Digi, I had the same problem! Worked perfectly afterwards.

MIGHTY Said,

Mon, 17 March 2008 08:07am (GMT)

COOL..I'VE TRIED IT AND IT WORKS...

Henry Said,

Sun, 01 June 2008 12:29pm (GMT)

Cool tutorial. If you keep the original image as background layer and then duplicate it and use these effects to the new layer, try changing the 'sketch'-layer's blending mode to Soft Light. You get an anime-like image.

sketch Said,

Sun, 24 January 2010 15:25pm (GMT)

Nice conversion effect from original picture to sketch

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