Making a photo a sketch

[fayt]

For days I've been trying to make a photo into a sketch. This is exactly what I want to do, however it's for Photoshop. Do you know how to do this in Corel?
Thanks!

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/phot ... to-sketch/

[LeviFiction]

Pretty much the exact same way. I notice you have Photo Paint X8, are you also using PaintShop Pro? Because PhotoPaint and PaintShop Pro are two different softwares. And CorelDraw has its own set of forums somewhere else.

This is for PaintShop Pro

1) Duplicate Background layer (Layers -> Duplicate OR right-click on layer and Duplicate)
2) Go to Adjust -> Hue & Saturation -> Hue/Saturation/Lightness Set Saturation to -100 to desaturate the image. (There are several methods for creating a greyscale image, including scripts but this will do for now)
3) Duplicate Greyscale layer
4) Image -> Negative Image (Invert in Photoshop)
5) Set Layer Blend mode to Dodge (Color Dodge in Photoshop)
6) Use any blur option, though keeping to the tutorial Gaussian Blur at 12.5
7) This part depends on your version of PaintShop Pro. X8 has a a "Merge Visible to New Layer" older versions you "Copy Merged" and then "Paste As New Layer"
8) Set Blend Mode Multiply and set Opacity
9) Duplicate the background layer and move it to the top of the layers
10) Set Blend Mode to color and set Opacity

[JoeB]

If this is something a person would want to do quite often, I suspect that creating an interactive script would be the smart thing to do for efficiency, effectively creating a Sketch script that works like some sketch plugins.

[hartpaul]

Other tutorials for this:
http://psptricksandtips.blogspot.com.au ... paint.html

http://www.the-graphics-tablet.com/pain ... e-art.html

[fayt]

I have photo paint. So I guess I am not able to do this. I'll have to buy Paint shop. It would be nice for someone to create a script for this. I intend to use it a good bit. I'd be willing to pay for a script.

[LeviFiction]

From what I read PhotoPaint has "Objects" and "Lenses" instead of layers. These allow you to layer things and be non-destructive similar to Photoshop's Smart Object. So you may be able to do the effect with PhotoPaint but just not in this way. FIrst learn the basics of your program how Lenses and Objects work to allow you to simulate layers. Then learn how to do things like Invert, Greyscale, and Gaussian Blur as well as blend modes. I assume all of those are possible in PhotoPaint.

I suggest asking over at the CorelDraw community before buying a new product just for this effect. There may even be plugins or premade options for PhotoPaint

https://community.coreldraw.com/talk/

[JoeB]

I followed my own suggestion and decided to try making a script from LeviFiction's steps for creating an effect similar to what @fayt requested, and tried it on several different images with different opacity settings and got what I thought were some interesting results. I'm attaching one of those results here (before and after).

So if anyone is interested in the script, I have posted it in the Scripting sub-group as Colorized Pencil Sketch with information on how to use it with user input to be able to adjust the opacity of the layers where required.

[photodrawken]

Does anyone else think, as I do, that those examples don't look anything like a pencil sketch?

To me, they simply look like grotesquely blurred photos. I think that a pencil sketch should look like it was drawn with a pointed tool and show some texture (as if drawn on paper):

I used the technique referred to in one of the tutorials that applied a "Minimum" filter instead of a "Gaussian Blur". I then applied a texture effect to the B&W result before blending it onto the original photo.

The specific steps are only relevant to my image editor of choice, so I won't list them here, but the point is that something similar should be looked for using PSP....

[JoeB]

I would agree that the result of my experiment doesn't quite qualify as a pencil sketch, but my script was named based on the title of the original PS tutorial. The actual result depends to some extent on the image you're starting with (flyaway hair, for example, would look more like a pencil sketch than more opaque and solid items. But given there are a variety of ways of getting various sketch type effects, in the end it often is just a matter of whether or not the user finds the result an interesting and pleasing change to the original. My own experiments with different images gave different results - some more like a pencil, some more like colored chalk, etc., depending on the input image. So anyone wanting to try it should be someone who simply enjoys experimenting with these types of effects on different images to see if they get something that pleases them.

[LeviFiction]

Photodrawken, would you be willing to list the steps used in PhotoLine anyway? Maybe with a good tutorial we can find a similar method for PSP.

[photodrawken]

... in the end it often is just a matter of whether or not the user finds the result and interesting and pleasing change to the original.

I wholeheartedly agree -- after all, Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

[photodrawken]

Photodrawken, would you be willing to list the steps used in PhotoLine anyway? Maybe with a good tutorial we can find a similar method for PSP.

Sure. The steps follow one of the Photoshop tutorials that was referenced (the tutorial that uses the "Minimum" filter). The only thing I added was roughening the resulting B&W image.

Here are the steps in PhotoLine:

1. Open an image.
2. Duplicate the image layer.
3. On that duplicated layer, use the Gray Mixer to convert the image to B&W. For this particular image, I altered the darkness of the Red colours to -22% and increased the brightness of the Orange colours to +24%.
4. Duplicate that B&W layer.
5. Invert the colours of that duplicated B&W layer.
6. Change the blend mode of that inverted B&W layer to "Color Dodge".
7. To that inverted B&W layer, apply a "Minimum" filter with a Size of "3". (Working in RGB mode.)
8. Select both B&W layers and merge them.
9. To that merged B&W layer, apply a "Sponge" filter with a Size of "3"; again working in RGB mode. This roughens the B&W image to give the impression that it was drawn on textured paper.

That's all it takes to give the impression (to my eyes) of a B&W pencil sketch.

For the colour result I posted, I set the blend mode of the top B&W layer to "Screen" and reduced its opacity to 80%.

A slightly different colour effect, which I like a little better, is to leave the blend mode of the B&W layer at "Normal" and just reduce its opacity to 70%:

[LeviFiction]

I think Erode under Edge Effects is the equivalent for "minimum." So the sponge effect is all we need.

Fur effect can look similar, though ti's not an exact equivalent. Blur:5 Length: 4 Density: 75 Opacity: 38

I can also, Duplicate the layer twice, do a motion blur at 90 degrees on one and 270 on the other. Both at the same distance. Then set both to dissolve with an opacity of 50% on both layers and then merged down.

[photodrawken]

Pretty much any effect that converts tones into tiny, broken-up dots should do it. Sponge, Roughen, Grain, Noise, etc. Experimentation will tell....

This example used the Minimum filter at an intensity of 270% to more clearly separate tonal values, and a Grain effect at a density of 100% so that every tone has texture:

[photodrawken]

This is addictive!

There is a subtle, but noticeable, difference in the finished result that depends on the layer order. In my previous examples, I kept the B&W layer at the top of the stack. If you look closely at those, you'll see that the "pencil" marks appear to be drawn over areas that are uniformly coloured. It's especially noticeable in the sweater and the background.

For this example, I switched the layer order so that the original image is at the top and the B&W image is at the bottom. That top colour image has a blend mode of "Overlay" and an opacity of 70%:

I had to boost the saturation of the colour image and apply a Curves adjustment layer at the top of the stack to darken everything (working in Lab mode on the "L" channel).

This example is probably technically closer to a "pencil sketch" because most of the drawing's dots are on a white background. (Now that I've had a chance to see the image as posted in the forum, I have to say that the distinction is not very apparent. Probably because the image had to be resized and down-sampled to fit the posting guidelines.)

Just goes to show how simple variations can have a profound effect....