Tracing a photo

[Steve KJ]

Hi

Another basic question in 2 parts.....

1. Is there a video or instructions to follow to show the best settings when tracing a photo. I have a photo and have added a layer on top and want to create some line art by tracing the photo but the results are not good. Sometimes its a bit jagged or i end up manipulating curves, its very confusing. I want something that reacts just like a pencil on tracing paper.
2. For line art vectors I already have is there a quick way to fill in between the black lines with white as they are ''see through'' at the moment.
3. 

[v_kyr]

1. Not sure if you mean a manual hand trace (aka retracing by manual hand drawing) or using some autotracer/vectorizer tool here? - As that drawing has still some amount of lines, redrawing all those manually by hand might take it's time, thus I would personally probably use some autotracer for quick turnarounds.
2. As most of those lines there aren't closed paths/curves and some are thin others are thick and so on, it's difficult to fill seperate specific drawing areas step-for-step here with white color etc. So I personally would instead make either manually some white outer shape and place the black curve drawing on that then, or let instead an autotracer/vectorizer tool perform a two color trace (black & white). The latter is of course the quickest way and you can afterwards still fine tune that in ADe.

• face-1294558_1280.pdf
• face-1294558_1280.svg
• face-white.pdf
• face-white.svg

[Steve KJ]

Thank you very much I will investigate those options. Again a wonderful forum with loads of really helpful people.

[Steve KJ]

9 hours ago, v_kyr said:

1. Not sure if you mean a manual hand trace (aka retracing by manual hand drawing) or using some autotracer/vectorizer tool here? - As that drawing has still some amount of lines, redrawing all those manually by hand might take it's time, thus I would personally probably use some autotracer for quick turnarounds.
2. As most of those lines there aren't closed paths/curves and some are thin others are thick and so on, it's difficult to fill seperate specific drawing areas step-for-step here with white color etc. So I personally would instead make either manually some white outer shape and place the black curve drawing on that then, or let instead an autotracer/vectorizer tool perform a two color trace (black & white). The latter is of course the quickest way and you can afterwards still fine tune that in ADe.

• face-1294558_1280.pdf
• face-1294558_1280.svg
• face-white.pdf
• face-white.svg

Hi v_kyr

 

I meant a phone and wanted to get the result of the nurse shown here.

Thanks for the software list, that might be just what I needed!

many thanks

Steve

[v_kyr]

3 minutes ago, Steve KJ said:

I meant a phone and wanted to get the result of the nurse shown here.

So AFAI understand you here, you want to showup that nurse image then vectorized (as a vector graphics) on some phone screen? Or did you mean instead as a bitmap/pixel drawing on a phone screen?

However, for both you can scale it up the way of/to dimensions the respective phone screen then max supports. Where vector images in contrast have the advantage that they can been scalled up/down to arbitrary sizes here without visual pixelation. - So for example let's say size the vector graphics representation of that nurse to some iPhone 2532 x 1170 Pixel dimensions and then exporting that result as an pixel/bitmap image (JPG, PNG etc.) should fill up entirely an iPhone 14 screen.

[Steve KJ]

I hate autocorrect. 

I meant to say that I had a photo of a nurse and I want to produce what looks like a hand drawn picture similar to the nurse I have supplied. I’ve looked at some of the software on that list and it doesn’t quite do what I want, so I might have to just end up tracing it freehand in Affinity Designer (?).

 

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, Steve KJ said:

I hate autocorrect. 

I meant to say that I had a photo of a nurse and I want to produce what looks like a hand drawn picture similar to the nurse I have supplied. I’ve looked at some of the software on that list and it doesn’t quite do what I want, so I might have to just end up tracing it freehand in Affinity Designer (?).

Ah Ok, no, common bitmap-to-vector autotracers/vectorizers will (...if they are good ones) always produce a vector representation of what you've thrown on them as a pixel/bitmap drawing/photo. - If it should instead look pretty much like an own manual hand drawing, then you really better draw that manually by hand yourself!

 

[Brian_J]

There are techniques for turning a photo into a Pencil sketch. If you want a vector graphic, and trace apps don’t provide the results you’re looking for, like v_kyr mentioned, you’ll need to “draw” it by hand.

Google search: affinity photo turn photo into line drawing

How to Turn Any Picture Into a Pencil Sketch Affinity Photo

 

Turn Your Photo Into Sketch in Affinity Photo Pencil Sketch Effect Tutorial

 

 

Turn Any Photo Into a Pencil Drawing | Affinity Photo Tutorial

 

 

How to Turn Photo to Sketch // Affinity Photo Easy & Fast Tutorial

 

 

Realistic Pencil Sketch - Affinity Photo