The Doll Forum

Ok, now to reveal another photoshop secret. I'll now try to demonstrate how I turn photos into graphite pencil drawings.
I'll start with a pic of Chloe that I've cut to a white background using the quick selection tool and refine edge functions in CS5,(the program I use). I set it's size at 1440X1800. The First order of business is to convert the image into a smart object by selecting Layer>Smart Objects>Convert to Smart Object Next, press Ctrl/J to make a duplicate of the layer, then we'll reduce the surface details by going to: Filters>Noise>Median. I set the radius to 3, but you may want to try different settings depending on you image. Press OK. Now the fun begins. Go to Filter>Brush Strokes>Sprayed Strokes, move the stroke length slider all the way to the right, (maximum), set the spray radius somewhere in the middle and set the stroke direction to Right Diagonal. Don't press OK yet. Click on the new effects icon at the bottom of the window, (circled in red), and click on crosshatch. Move the Stroke Length slider to the left to a value in the bottom third, do the same with the Sharpness slider, and move the Strength slider to the right to a higher value. Don't click OK yet either. Click on the new effect icon once more, and click on the triangle next to Artistic, and select Colored Pencil. Move the Pencil Width to a lower value, the Stroke Pressure up to around 10, and the Paper Brightness to maximum (50). Press OK Change the blend mode of the top layer to Hard Light Press Ctrl/J to make a copy of that layer and change it's blend mode to lighten As you can see, we now have a pretty nice colored pencil sketch and could stop there. But that's not the effect I'm going for today. So the next thing I want to do is add an adjustment overlay to the mix by clicking the Black and White icon in the adjustments panel, (circled in the image above), to get this result. Now press Ctrl/Shift/E to merge all the layers into one. Then, right click the remaining layer and select Flatten. Now, we could stop there, but I always like to add a sketch paper texture overlay to the image for effect. So, click on the add new layer icon at the bottom of the layers pallette to create a new blank layer. Then click Shift/Backspace to bring up the fill dialog. Select Pattern in the Use: window, click of the triangle next to the custom pattern window to bring up the pattern list, click on the list's triangle to bring up the patterns menu and select colored paper from that list, a window will appear, click on "Append" when it does, and scroll through the patterns until you find one called "Sketch Paper", select it and click OK. The pattern will then completely cover the image, change the blend mode of the layer to Multiply, press Ctrl/E to merge the layers Finally, (whew), press Ctrl/Alt/I and reduce the size, (if you want to post it on LDF that is), as always I used 800X1000, and you're done. Here's the result I got: As always, I thank you for your time. Ta For Now, B~M

Wow, dude, thanks for the step by step; learned a lot about
the app options overall.
The results are impressive.
Thanks for sharing.