Sponsored by the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. Learn More
This week I’ll show you a quick way to turn your photos into a line art drawing. This effect is fairly popular, but I’ve not seen many tutorials on how to get from point A to point F (i.e. finished image). So without further ado…
Open your Photo.

Duplicate the Background Layer.

Go to Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation. Reduce the saturation of the Background Copy layer.


Duplicate the Background Copy Layer.

Go to Filter>Stylize>Find Edges and apply it to the newly created, topmost layer.


That is really a bit overbearing, so lets see if we can’t make the line art a bit more subtle. Set the top layer blending mode to ‘Screen.


Click the ‘Add a Mask’ icon on the bottom of the Layers Palette. Make sure the foreground Color is set to Black. Click on the Paint Brush Tool, select Airbrush and get a large, soft brush. Start lightly painting areas of the image where you would like some color to spill through, such as the cheeks, the background, and so forth.


![]()


As an added touch, there is a quick way to ‘age’ the painting using a pattern fill. For instance, here is a pattern I created last night. I’ve created a new layer above the face layers, and filled it with my pattern.

Not I’ll just set the Blending Mode for the top layer to ‘Soft Light’ and here’s the image:

Just a quick note- I’m just finishing up dozens of add-ons specifically for Photoshop 7, so please stop back Action Fx. Take care!
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Corey has a cool trick for creating a flare brush and see how one effect can lead to another.
See how you can add some subtle touches to give that green screen studio shot the Hollywood treatment.
Corey shows how to create reflective holiday ornaments using 3D in Photoshop.
This week Corey has a cool new trick for using 3D reflections in a rather creative way!
If you have a multilayer composition and you
want to apply an effect to all the layers at once, don’t flatten the layers–use a composite layer instead. Hide the layers you want excluded, and press Shift-Command-Option-E (PC: Shift-Ctrl-Alt-E). A new layer will be created at the top containing a merged copy of all the visible layers.
Another option is to create a new layer at the top of the stack and make it active. Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) each layer you want to include to make those layers active, as well. Press Option-Command-E (PC: Alt-Ctrl-E).
by Colin Smith
luke said on — February 3, 2010 @ 3:03 pm
an ideal way to prepare a photographic subject for painting
mohammed said on — May 3, 2011 @ 10:47 pm
great corey, thanks for Detailed explanation