Changing a Photo into a Black and White Line Drawing

[NW Stonewise]

There may already be this question being answered somewhere else but I did not see it. I would like to be able to take photographs and change them into black and white line drawings but keeping a lot of the detail which gets lost in just "tracing" the image as well as I need rather solid lines and often they don't turn out solid enough...I am pretty illiterate when it comes to these programs so if you have a very simple (dumb downed) way to do so I would SO appreciate it!! Thank you!!

 

I have attached a photo and one of the drawings that someone else did for me so you can see what I mean...

[DonatoF]

Here's a quick go -

1. Filter>Detect>Detect Edges

2. Layer>Invert

3. Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Black& White Adjustment

 

 

[DonatoF]

By the way, I know the result wasn't exactly the same as the hand drawn, but you can start with the B&W adjustment first, increase the contrast or play with other things to get what you are after, there are many ways to go about it in Photo.

[bob prince]

On 7/4/2016 at 1:41 PM, DonatoF said:

Here's a quick go -

1. Filter>Detect>Detect Edges

2. Layer>Invert

3. Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Black& White Adjustment

 

 

Building on the basic instruction in this post here is a more refined method. Note: it is better to leave the Black and White  adjustment until after you have adjusted Curves... 

Turn photo into a drawing. Simple method.

1, Place photo on New doc > duplicate and Select duplicated layer.

2, Filters >Detect edges

3, Layer >Invert (important) [Ctrl i]

4, Adjust >Curves. Drag low end of the curve line to the right

 until all the lines you want to see are defined.

5, Drag the top end of the line to the left until most of the gray detail disappears

6, Reselect the duplicate layer

7, Adjust >Black and White and Voila!

8, Group it all together and Rasterise

If you want to use the line drawing as the top layer and place something like Watercolour brush effects underneath you can make the white layer transparent by choosing:

Filters >colours > Erase White Paper

This method is easier to understand and more effective than other methods I have seen demonstrated.

[jmwellborn]

Welcome to the Forums @bob prince😊!  What a nice post for your first!   And what a nice surprise for me!!  I was fiddling just yesterday with an image that was resisting my every effort (entirely black background with a very lacy foreground).   I used your method and -- as you so aptly state -- Voilà.   Thank you.  It worked like a charm.