Creating A Pencil Drawing From A Digital Image

@gk fotografie reminded me today of a technique I used years ago to create a line drawing by sandwiching a positive and negative film. Started me thinking about how to do it in the digital world. I found that it actually wasn't that difficult by simply duplicating your image layer. Setting the mode to Color Dodge, then inverting, and finally applying a Gaussian blur set to around 18. Further refining it with a hue/saturation layer to desaturate the image, then refining the lines with a curves layer. The only thing is that the lines don't have the crispness I remember from the darkroom method. Like all things new, it could use some more refining.

 

Footnote to above. After you set the layer mode to color dodge and invert. I would suggest converting it to a smart filter, before you add Gaussian blur, so you can go back and change if need be.

 

This sorta looks like that old plug in for video CartoonR. There were options to make it black/white pencil. For me the hat is distracting and I would crop to accentuate the face. Thanks for sharing the how to.

 

That is pretty neat! I used to have an old Nikon point and shoot that had a built in mode which would produce something similar. What a cool trick you have up your sleeve!

 

Nice one......

 

@Jeff15 @JustJazzie @CherylL thank you.
Trying to develop a little better image, added paper texture which also brightened the whites. Any better?

 

The problem that can't be bridged digitally is the fact that a duplicate (film) negative or positive made from a original (film) positive or nagative is always just a tad narrower than the original. So, if you put (film) positive and negative together there will always be a miniscule contour visible. This feature is thus used when lighting such a negative+positive sandwich with the enlarger, because this causes the final small line.
If you put a digital positive and negative (layers) on each other, you see no contour, because they cover each other 100%, so there's the problem. A solution is to make the digital negative of a desired photo overall slightly bigger (horizontal/vertical) and put both layers together, a method that isn't perfect, will need the necessary adjustments, but as a basis (see attached B&W image) good to continue experimenting. In color, with color negatives you can achieve very interesting, abstract effects in this way.

Gerard

 

@gk fotografie I considered using duplicate images one positive and one inverted then merged. Your comment on the difference in size gave me some new ideas.

 

@gk fotografie here's another version via Ps, that uses a different method giving it more of a pen and ink look. It employs among other things the High Pass filter, Sketch filter and the Charcoal filter. One thing I'm finding is that images with less little detail work better as even with the contrast bumped way up, this still had to much little detail. Still I think it's a better option then the first.

 

I often use plugins such as ink drawing and pencil sketch, but only in combination and merging with the original image, because "as is" I don't find these effects interesting enough. About ten years ago, just to try, I downloaded the free PaintNet program and for most experiments I nowadays mainly use this program, while filling up with more than 250 plugins and, for example, also the free edition of Nik-filters.

Since I don't know exactly which "tricks" I've collected over the years, yesterday I started my search and found something nice that comes very close to the intended line effect. This effect is called (believe it or not!) "CONTOUR" and it would surprise me if something like this can't be found as a plugin for Lr or Ps, too. (I don't use Photoshop anymore, so can't help you with that) I personally find this contour effect a better choice, because there's much more combination possibilities than with ink drawing or pencil sketch. Maybe try PaintNet (no RAW, unfortunately): https://www.getpaint.net/index.html
Website with all kinds of PaintNet plugins: Plugins - Publishing ONLY!

Here are some examples:

1. positive from the original
2. negative from the original
3. combination positive + negative
4. combination negative + original
5. combination original + combination # 3
6. color variant negative + original + green filter

 

The cabin above was from a raw file. If you haven't done so I'd highly recommend looking in the "Filter Gallery" of Ps CC. I'm on release 20.0.1. I've only just scratched the surface of what's available. I've used NIK and several other plugins for years, but after the latest updates this past year to Lr & Ps. I dumped them all. There just isn't any reason to go outside anymore.