Turn an Image into a Colored Pencil Drawing in Adobe Photoshop

Have you ever seen a Colored Pencil Drawing? They look really neat. Did you know that you can take any image and turn it into a colored pencil drawing? In Adobe Photoshop it can be done in minutes. I think this is one of the coolest effects that you can apply to an image in Adobe Photoshop. So let’s begin…

Step 1 – Open your Adobe Photoshop program.

Step 2 – Open the image that you want to use by going to File > Open and select the image from your hard drive, then click OK.

Step 3 – If your image is not bright, use the brightness and contrast tool to make your image crisp.

Step 4 – Duplicate the layer by right clicking on the layer in the layers panel and click Duplicate Layer.

Step 5 – Name the layer “Edges”

Step 6 – In the top of your Photoshop window click Filter > Blur > Smart Blur.

Step 7 – A dialog box will appear. Enter the following in the fields:
Radius – 40
Threshold – 85
Quality – High
Mode – Edges Only
Then Click OK. This will outline the edges in your image. You may need to adjust the Radius & Threshold depending on your image.

Step 8 – On your keyboard press CTRL + I.

Step 9 – In the top of your Photoshop window click Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur.

Step 10 – In the dialog box make the radius about 1.2 pixels.

Step 11 – Click on the Edges Layer to highlight it.

Step 12 – Drop Down the Blending Mode window and select Multiply.

See Image 1 for the final results…

Now your image should look like a pencil drawing. You can play around with the Gaussin Blur Radius to get the edges the way you want them. Different images sometimes needs a higher Gaussin Blur Radius. Also you may want to play around with the Radius and the Threshold on the Smart Blur to get the effect just the way you want it. You can change these by editing the Layers in the Layers Panel in Photoshop. If you can’t get it to look right just keep playing with the smart blur filter. That is where most of the effect comes from for the pencil drawing. Don’t forget that you may need to brighten the image some if it isn’t a bright image. Turning an Image into a Colored Pencil Drawing in Adobe Photoshop can make a nice piece of art to print out and frame. Have Fun!!!