From Image to Sketch

First off, find a photo. That one is kinda obivous. I’m going with this amazing pic that I found of Evangeline Lilly who plays TV’s Kate Austin on the hit series LOST. Feel free to use this photo as well.

Step 2

Next we need to take the colour out of the layer that we just created.

Image > Adjustments > Desaturate or CTRL+SHIFT+U (win) / COMMAND+SHIFT+U (mac)

Once you have your image, "Desaturated",
make a duplicate of that layer. (CTRL+J (win)
/ COMMAND+J (mac))

Step 3

You should have 3 layers now. "Layer 1 Copy", "Layer 1", & "Background". Now we are going to be working on the "Layer 1 Copy".

Image > Adjustments > Invert or CTRL+I (win) / COMMAND+I
(mac)
This will "Invert" the colours of the image. It looks a little strange but it will not last to long.

No need to get excited, your image is still there.

Step 4

This is the last step. See I told you that was going to be quick and painless.

Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur
Here is the trick to this. The lower that you set your blur, the less detailed it will be. The higher you set it, you will lose the effect that you are trying to reach. You need to find that sweet spot. Here are the settings that I used.

Resulting in…

There you have it. A beautiful photo to a pencil sketch. I went ahead and added some texture to it using a "Pattern Filled Adjustment Layer" just to make it look more like it was drawen on paper. Happy Photoshopping.

-daniel