This tutorial will show you how to easily turn your photograph to color drawing , as shown below, with photoshop native Filter Gallery without the drawing skill. You can also use this tutorial as a guideline to combine and blend different filters to create you own effects. The disadvantage of most photoshop artistic filters is, there’re always produce visible repeated texture. So in this tutorial will show how to combine many filter to reduce this unwanted effect.

Court Room Image from oldtucson.com

Show Original Image

You can follow this step-by-step to create the painting from your favorite photo. But please note that to produce the similar effect for other image, the setting for each filter may vary depend on the size of image and image’s detail. You may need to re-adjust the filter setting to produce the best result with your photo. So the setting in this tutorial are best for image size approximately 1000 pixel in width by 750 pixel in height.

Due to this tutorial use a lot of layers and filters. You can also download the action that can help you to process all layers and effects, rename the layer and arrange the layer in order as create in this tutorial. The action will not process the complete visual effect, you have to painted in each layer’s mask manually. Anyway you can use this action as a guide line and it will save a lot of your time. You can download the action below in this page here.

Note: In this tutorial, we try to keep it simple with minimum manual processes and use only standard photoshop filters and tools. This will allow you quickly produce the effect and suitable for all level of user. Although the result effect may not produce the exactly the same effect as real painting due to the limitation of the Photoshop native filter. The effect that produce more realistic painting might can be done with more complex process, high drawing skill and time consuming.

To Create Drawing from your Photo.

Layer Preparation

First after you open your image that you want to convert to drawing, before going further. I suggest you to working with the duplicate file. You can duplicate your opened image by, choose Image » Duplicate to copy the original image to new file. This process is safe-guard process to make sure that your original image be untouched so you can easily roll back anytime incase something went wrong. Now you can close the original image and we will start working with the new duplicate file.

Note: You can use Photoshop Action that available below in this page to create all layers and its effect for you, but if you are new Photoshop user. I strongly recommend that you should at least follow this step-by-step instruction at the first time.

1. Before you start make sure that you have only one layer in the image, if not you have to merge all layer by using Flatten Image Command by choose menu Layer » Flatten. Now you suppose to have only one layer call "Background", rename the it to "original", because in this tutorial we will have a bunch of layer to create so I will refer to each layer by using this layer name. You can rename layer by double-click the layer, this will call up New Layer dialog, type in the layer name in Name text box.
2. Apply Wave Filter to "original" layer by Choose menu Filter » Distort » Wave and use this setting show in the image below. In hand drawing image you might not see a lot of perfect straight line so we apply very small amount of Wave Filter to curve all the perfect straight lines in the interior photo for this example. This might not necessary if your original photo is organic object, such as portrait or animal.

   

3. Create New layer above "original" layer and name it "bg". You can create new layer by click New Layer Button at bottom of Layer Palette. You can also holding-down Alt(Option) key and click the New Button to bring up New Layer dialog. Now fill entire "bg" layer with white.

Tip: You can quickly fill color to entire layer with Foreground Color at the toolbox by press Alt + Backspace (Windows) or Option + Delete (MacOS). Or fill with Background Color, use Ctrl + Backspace (Windows) or Command + Delete (MacOS). You can also press "D" to reset foreground color to black and background color to white and use the previous the Short-Cut to fill color. To switch between For ground Color and Background Color press "X".

4. Duplicate "original" layer, you can duplicate layer by drag it to New Layer Button at bottom of Layer Palette or Right click at the layer an choose Layer Property. Rename is as "Base Layer ". Now you should have layer listed as show in image below.

   

Tip: You holding-down Alt(Option) key while dragging the layer to New Button to bring up New Layer dialog that allow you to rename the layer as well as duplicate the layer to other opened image.

5. Apply Water Color Filter by choose menu Filter » Artistic » Watercolor, this will bring up Filter Gallery windows. Use following setting; Brush Detail: 14, Shadow Intensity: 0, Texture:1.
   You may notice that after, apply Photoshop Water Color filter, you will got sharp or jagged edges in some area. In fact, most of photoshop artistic filter will produce this similar unpresentable result. You can correct it by apply small amount of Gaussian Blur (Filter » Blur » Gaussian Blur ) as needed.
   For this layer, i use 0.3px of Gaussian Blur.

   

Note: Although the Photoshop Filter Gallery allow you to stack different filters and apply it in single process, but it will not work for this tutorial. We use a lot of filter, most of it are include in Filter Gallery, but we need to mask out some parts of each layer so we have to do it manually in regular layer. (See also Photoshop Filter Gallery: Quick Reference)

6. Duplicate "original" layer and reorder it to the top most layer and rename it to "Hard Stroke" and decrease Layer Opacity (at top right of Layer Palette) to 60%. Apply Poster Edges Filter (Filter » Artistic » Poster Edges) using following setting; Edge Thickness: 10, Edge Intensity: 1, Posterization: 2. And apply Gaussian Blur (Filter » Blur » Gaussian Blur ) with 1pixel value. The Posterize Filter will loosing the edge detail and we will use this layer for the darken shadow along the edges.

   

7. Duplicate "original" layer again and move it to top most layer, rename it as "Soft Light". Apply Angled Strokes Filter (Filter » Brush Strokes » Angled Strokes ) with Direction Balance 30, Stroke Length 20, Sharpness 8. Set Layer Blending Mode, at the top of Layer Palette, to Soft Light and Opacity to 35%. This layer intended to create detailed brush texture and also raise up contrast and image color saturation.

   

8. Duplicate "original" layer, rename it as "Outline" and place it above all layer. Apply Find Edge filter ( Filter » Stylize » Poster Edges). With "Outline" layer select choose menu Image » Adjustment » Hue/Saturation or press Ctrl(Command) + U to bring up Hue/Saturation dialog. At master channel desaturation entire layer by drag Saturation slider bar all the way to left to -100 or enter -100 in to Saturation text box. Set layer blending to Multiply and Opacity to 50%. This layer will be use as ink or pencil stroke that painter used to define the object’s outline.

Full Size Image

9. Create new Layer set by click New Layer set icon at bottom of Layer palette. And put "Base Layer", "Dark Stroke", "Soft Light " and "Outline" layer in to the new layer set. Make sure they are arrange in original order. You final layers should list as image below.

Tips: If you are using Photoshop CS2 or Later, you can move all layers to layer set at one drag by, Ctrl(Command) + Click select layer you need to move or Shift + Click to select top most layer and then bottom most layer to select the layer and all layers in between. Now you can move all selected layer together.

Note: If you use Photoshop 6 or earlier, which have no layer set, you can use layer clipping instead. By use “Base Layer” as base of layer clipping. And in Photoshop 7 layer set are call “Layer Group“. See also "How to create photoshop layer clipping".

 

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