Turn Any Photo into an Artistic Sketch

Turn Any Photo into an Artistic Sketch

Turn any photo into an artistic sketch, quickly and easily. You will have the option of choosing to leave in the color or to remove it depending on the effect you wish to achieve.

Notes

• This tutorial is for Photoshop users with beginner to intermediate skills

Preview

Before we begin, check out a quick preview of what we will be creating.

Start of by opening up the image you wish to turn into a sketch. The stock image we will be using is shown below.

Create three copies of the original locked background layer as shown. To make copies of a layer simply select the layer and hit Ctrl+J. We will rename them Layer 3, Layer 2, Layer 1 for simplicity.

Select the top most layer, Layer 3, and desaturate it by going to Image> Adjustments > Desaturate. Now duplicate this layer (Ctrl + J) and we will call it Layer 4.

While having Layer 4 selected, go to Image > Adjustments > Invert.

Now set the blend mode to “Color Dodge”. If you followed everything correctly, the whole canvas should go blank white now.

With Layer 4 still selected go to Filter > Guassian Blur. Depending on the contrast of your image, you will have to play around with the slider to get the effect you desire. The further left you move the slider, the stronger the sketch effect. We found our desired effect at 8.

If you wish to have the sketch black and white you are pretty much done. You can tweak the Brightness and Contrast to darken/lighten the image. However, we are going to bring back some color.

Select Layer 3 and drop it’s opacity to 50% so you can see what you are doing with the layers below, you can fiddle with this opacity at the end if you desire.

Select Layer 2 go to Filter > Brush Strokes > Angled Strokes and play around with the settings. We used to the following settings shown below.

Next change the blend mode of the layer to “Multiply” and reduce the opacity to 80%. The result is shown below.

Now select Layer 1 go to Filter > Artistic > Cutout. Again, play around with the settings to get your desired effect, we used the following.

Our result so far is shown below

Now all that’s left is to add some finishing touches. Add an adjustment layer at the very top, to modify the Brightness and Contrast

And there you have it, a simply way to add an artistic touch to any photo!