Creating a Sketched or Painted Effect

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Creating a Sketched or Painted Effect

Worth 1000

Create a sketched or painted effect in Photoshop from a photograph.

What we want to achieve

Basically, I wanted to find a way to create a sketched effect in Photoshop. It can be adapted in many ways toward the end to change the effect completely, so you'll hopefully find it quite versatile.

This assumes a reasonable knowledge of PS. I use PS6.
It works best with an image which 'fills' the area and is quite colourful. I started with this one ;

And turned it into this one ;

Sort out the layers

Step 1. Firstly duplicate the layer (right mouse click the layer and select 'Duplicate layer').

Step 2. Desaturate this new layer (Image > Adjust > Desaturate or Shift + CTRL + U) and rename it Desaturated.

Step 3. Duplicate the layer named Desaturated.

Step 4. Invert this new layer (Image > Adjust > Invert or CTRL + I) and rename it Desaturated & Inverted.

Your image should now look like this ;

And your layers should appear like this:

Blend Modes

Step 5. Right mouse click the top layer titled Desaturated & Inverted and choose Blending Options. Change the Blend Mode to Color Dodge.

Your image should now appear to have almost nothing in it, like this ;

Blur to see the image

Step 6. With the top layer titled Desaturated & Inverted selected, use the Gaussian Blur filter (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur).

I used a radius of around 2 pixels, but you'll need to play around until you find a level you like.

Now it should look like this (and as a pencil sketch, it's not bad) ;

Color!

Step 7. Merge the 2 top layers titled Desaturated and Desaturated & Inverted (CTRL + E will merge the layer you have selected plus the one below)
Step 8. Change the Blend mode of this new top layer to Luminosity

The original color layer at the bottom should now show through like this ;

Filters

Step 9. This is where you can play around to find different effects. I used the Fresco filter (Filter > Artistic > Fresco) to achieve this ;

but Cutout works well, as does Smudge Stick and Film Grain.

Have fun with it. Let me know if you find any nice variations.

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