Photoshop Tutorial - Creating a Sketch Out of Photoshop

This is a simple four step tutorial for taking a digital photo and turning into something that looks like a pencil sketch. Be sure to play around with the settings in each step. Experiment and see what they do. Ready? Let’s give it a try. I’m using a stock photo I found on a free photo site for this demonstration. NOTE: The CTRL keys are for Windows PC. Macintosh users will use the Command key, or Open Apple key instead of the CTRL key.

Step 1: Open your photograph in Photoshop. Go into the Image menu - Adjustments and try Autolevels or any other auto adjustments needed so you have good contrast and color.

Step 2: Duplicate your photo into a new layer (CTRL-J). Desaturate the photo by doing Image -> Adjustments -> Desaturate.

Step 3: Duplicate the desaturated layer (CTRL-J). Invert it by doing CTRL-I or going into the Image-Adjustments-Invert menu. Change it’s layer blending (in the Layers palette) mode to Color Dodge or Linear Dodge.
You now should have a totally white image (or mostly white).

Step 4: Now go to the filter menu and do Blur -> Motion Blur. Adjust the level and angle settings until you’re happy with the result. Simple and quick. If the sketch is too light, go into the Image-Adjustments-Levels menu dialog and slide the left triangle under the graph to the right until it touchs the edge of the graph.

One other thing you can do is bring the color layer on top and set it’s layer palette blending mode to hue or color and make this a color sketch.

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