| Back to Photoshop Tutorials Page |
In this brief tutorial we will look at how to easily convert a photograph into a black and white line drawing with just a few quick clicks.
Read just as much as you need - or read the whole thing for advanced steps |
| click image to view larger |
| 1-Open Photoshop. Choose the photo you want to convert to black and white line art. It is important that the photo a clean composition with good lines for best results - complex patterns tend to make for alot of "noise" in the picture that requires extra time to remove by hand. |
 |
| |
|
| 2-In the menu at the top go to IMAGE and then ADJUSTMENTS and choose "Desaturate". |
 |
| |
|
| 3-Now your image is black and white. |
 |
| |
|
| 4-Make sure your foreground color is white and your background color is black. You will see these two blocks in your left toolbox. Click each box to set its color correctly. |
 |
| |
|
| 5-In the menu at the top go to FILTER then SKETCH then click STAMP. |
 |
| |
|
6-In the box that opens set the Smootheness to 0 to insure you get sharp clean lines. You can move the Light/Dark Balanace back and forth until you have selected just the portion of image you want.
*don't forget you can zoom in and out by clicking the + or - symbols below the image preview |
 |
| |
|
7-As you can now see your photo has been converted to a black and white line drawing.
From here you can use your eraser or paintbruch/penil (pencil is best for matching sharp lines) to modify the image as you see fit.
Continue reading below for advanced editing steps... |
 |
| |
|
8-In the Layers Panel - generally located bottom right - RIGHT-Click on your backhround layer and choose "Duplicate Layer".
Click OK when prompted. |
 |
| |
|
9- Next, RIGHT-Click on the background layer again and choose "Delete Layer" ; click OK when prompted.
As you can see, you now have a unlocked duplicate layer of your background. |
 |
| |
|
10-Make sure your foreground color is still white and your background color is black.
Then go to SELECT then Color Range. |
 |
| |
|
11-The Color Range box will now appear. You can select the 'fuzziness' with the slider bar - essentially selecting how much of the white color you will be selecting / it's sharpness. For this type of application I usually set it fairly low...
Click OK.
You will now note your white is selected. Hit the delete key on your keyboard and see the result. |
 |
| |
|
12- You have effectively removed the white from the picture, leaving just the black lines. You can go SELECT then Deselct to remove the selecting lines around the remaining lines.
From here you can copy and paste this onto any color or possibly convert it to vector. Or continue to what I did below... |
 |
| |
|
13- Save your line work photo under another name with the "Save As" option in the FILE menu at the top. Then reopen your original photo, copy and paste it into the open copy of your line work photo - making sure to put the photo below the line work in the Layers Panel.
The end result is a very neat sort of comic-bookish image... |
 |
| Bookmark This Page |
|
| This tutorial was created by Hinsel. Images used were screen captured from Adobe's Photoshop to whom all copyright and thanks goes for their revolutionary image manipulation software. |
| |