Photoshop: Turn Your Photos Into Pencil Sketches

Take any old photograph and make it look like a pencil drawing in a just few easy steps! 

Step 1:

Choose a picture and open it in Photoshop.  

Step 2:

Press Control+J.  This will copy the photo into a new layer.

Step 3:

Click on the Adjust Layer button (it may be right at the bottom of the layer box or at the bottom of the page). Then select "Hue/Saturation" from the pop-up list.

Step 4:

The Hue/ Saturation dialog box will appear. Reduce saturation to -100 by sliding the arrow to the left.

Step 5:

Click layer 1 to activate. 

Step 6:

Where it says "Normal" on the layer editor box, click the drop down and select "Color Dodge." 

Step 7:

Press Ctrl + I to invert the picture.  Don't freak out if your image disappears and it turns all white; that is what you should expect from this step.  

Step 8:

Go to the "Filter" tab.  Select "Blur" then "Gaussian Blur" from the drop down menu.   

Step 9:

Slide the radius bar to your liking.  We recommend somewhere around 40 pixels. 

Step 10:

Click the layer adjustment button again and select "Levels."

Step 11:

The 'Levels' dialog box will open. Slide the arrows to your liking; this time you are in control of three different arrows, so you can just play around with them until you get your preferred look. 

Step 12:

Open the brush tool by clicking on the icon on the left side of your window. Change the Brush Size to large (recommend 400)  and hardness to 0 and opacity to 40.  

Note:  make sure the foreground color is black.  You can switch the foreground colors by clicking on the arrow next to the color swatches.

Step 13:

Brush over dark areas to make it look less dense by dragging the brush tool over your image.


And now you have a really cool pencil sketch of your photo!