Turn a photo portrait into a pencil drawing in Photoshop

We are going to apply a bunch of Photoshop effects and use a few tricks to turn a photograph of lovely Scarlett into a pencil drawing. It's a bite longer tutorial just be sure to follow it closely and you'll be fine.

Open a portrait photo.

It can be any other photo as well, I chose to turn the lovely actress Scarlett Johansson into a drawing.

Click Create a new Hue/Saturation adjustment layer (see picture).

If you can't find the Adjustments panel click Window and choose Adjustments.

In the Hue/Saturation windows set Saturation to -100.

We just used an adjustment layer to turn the photo black and white.

Select the original layer - Background layer (see picture).

Press Ctrl (Command in MacOS) and J, to duplicate the layer.

In the menu click Image, Adjustments and choose Invert.

Set the duplicated layer's blending mode to Color Dodge.

Don't worry if the document looks a little bland at the moment.

In the Layers palette click the options button on the right (see picture) and choose Convert to Smart Object.

Duplicate layer just got a little icon in its thumbnail which means it is now a Smart Object.

In the menu click Filter, Blur and choose Gaussian Blur...

Set the Radius to about 11 and choose OK.

This is how it should look like at this point.

Not bad right? :)

In step 8 we turned a layer into a Smart Object.

This come in really handy if you want to adjust the applied filters at any time you want. Simply double-click the filter if you want to readjust it (see picture).

Click Create a new Levels adjustment layer.

If you can't find the Adjustments panel click Window and choose Adjustments.

We will leave the Levels as they are only to set the blending mode to Multiply (see picture) ...

... and set its Opacity to about 60% (see picture).

Select the original Background layer.

Press Ctrl (Command in MacOS) and J, to duplicate the layer.

Now drag and drop the duplicated layer to the very top of the layers (see picture).

Set the layer's blending mode to Color (see picture).

Set the Opacity to about 40% (see picture).

Done!

This is how the whole image looks like.

Also recommended:

  How to turn a photo into a painting in Photoshop

  Turn a part of photo into a drawing with Photoshop

And the original Scarlett.