Turn A Photo Into A Sketch For Making Coloring Books

Turn A Photo Into A Sketch For Making Coloring Books

Want to make some nice coloring books? The first step is to turn a photo into a sketch, and that's exactly what we'll do now. This tutorial is fairly easy and consists of just 6 steps.

Start with your selected photo. Prep it so it's exactly the dimensions and resolution you want your final document to be.

STEP 1 - Duplicate The Background Layer
First duplicate the background layer. Go Layer> New> Layer via Copy. Now we have 2 layers, the Background Layer, and Layer 1.

STEP 2 - Desaturate The Photo
With Layer 1 selected, choose Image> Adjustments> Desaturate. This gives us a grayscale version of the photo.

STEP 3 - Duplicate Layer 1
At this point you must duplicate Layer 1. With Layer 1 selected, go Layer> New> Layer via Copy. Now we have 3 layers, the Background Layer, Layer 1 and Layer 2.

Next we'll be working with Layer 2.

STEP 4 - Invert Layer 2
With Layer 2 selected, go Image> Adjustments> Invert. This will make your photo look like a negative.

STEP 5 - Change The Layers Blend Mode To Color Dodge
In the Layers Palette change the Layers Blend Mode for this layer (Layer 2) to Color Dodge. This will make your photo almost completely white, but don't panic! Everything is going to work out just fine.

STEP 6 - Apply The Gaussian Blur Filter
Go Filter> Blur> Gaussian Blur. When the dialog box appears start by moving the Radius Slider all the way to the left. Once you've done that you can start to slowly move it to the right.

Now here comes some real Photoshop magic — because as you move the slider your sketch will start to appear. At this point take time to experiment and make sure you are getting the desired effect.

Bigger numbers create a more pronounced effect, but at some point this will turn your sketch back into a photo, which you don't want, so when you reach that point simply nudge the slider to the left just a little and that should do it!

For my apple sketch I used a Radius setting of 9.8 pixels.

Experiment With Settings
This technique will also work with the Motion Blur Filter and the Radial Blur Filter. The reason I mention this is sometimes an image will not work as expected, and so you have to try different methods.

Calling All Cezannes
Now print out your best sketches and create some nice coloring books, then give the kids some crayons and see what kind of crazy masterpieces they come up with!