Hi CAFE Crew, here is a brand new tut for you all. This is an old favorite of mine. How to turn a photo into a pencil sketch in photoshop. This is actually really easy to do and it gets quite good results too. As usual, I’ll provide a few creative jump off points at the end for your own experimentation.
1.
Start with a Photo that has some decent edge detail, here is one I got from Adobe Stock
2
Covert the photo to grayscale (Ctrl+Shift+D / Cmd+Shift+D)
3
Duplicate the layer by dragging into the new layer icon, or press Ctrl/Cmd+J
4
Invert the layer Cmd/Ctrl+I
5
Change to Linear Dodge blend mode and you should see a perfectly white image (Use Color Dodge for sharper edges)
6
Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur
(You could actually use any filter, as long as it creates a difference between the 2 layers)
As you adjust the blur you will get a different result.
Here are some variations using Color Dodge, you will notice that Linear Dodge produces a softer result that Color Dodge. Try different blending Modes for different results.
Here is the result on a different image
Xtra-credit
Once you have your perfect pencil sketch, why not try adding some color for a nice variation.
In this first example, I added a solid color Fill adjustment layer. Change the blend mode to color, so only the color shows through. Adjust the opacity to suit your tastes.
Color Dodge result
Also try running a gradient through a new blank layer at the top and change that to color blend mode.
As you can see, the effect itself is quite simple and there are a number of variations that you can try to get very different looking results. Add a comment at let me know how you are using this effect.
Thanks for checking out this tutorial. See you next week with another new tutorial!
Colin
PS Don’t forget to follow us on Social Media for more tips.. (I’ve been posting some fun Instagram and Facebook Stories lately)
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