Home >> Hobbies >> Photography

How to Change a Photo Into a Pencil Sketch

With digital photography and the use of advanced photo editing programs like Adobe Photoshop CS5 or Elements, photographers are able to take their pictures and turn them into prints that look like pencil sketches. By using filters and changing the color profile of the photograph, a print can be created that looks like a black and white sketch or sketch created with colored pencils. Once the filter has been applied the edited picture can be saved as separate file keeping the original picture for future editing tasks.

Instructions

- 1
  Turn your home computer on and open up Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop is offered in two variants, a full featured designed for professional photographers known as CS5. The other type is Elements that includes many of the same features, but is considerably less in cost.
- 2
  Click "File" and select "Open" from the drop down menu. Use your computer cursor to navigate to the folder containing the images you want to edit. Highlight the file by clicking the icon for the image and then clicking the "Ok" in the bottom right of the window.
- 3
  Click the "Filter" tab in the navigation bar and select "Artistic" from the drop-down menu, move your cursor to the list of options that opens up and select "Colored Pencil." A new window will open up showing a preview of the image already converted to a sketch.
- 4
  Click and hold the slider adjustment for "Pencil Width," "Stroke Pressure" and "Paper Brightness" to enhance the appearance of the picture. Once all the changes have been made click "Ok" in the new window and the program will change the picture to a sketch.

Photography