Photo to pencil filters

[Cheryl Holmes]

I received some excellent advise in helping me make my own artwork from pictures which I have been having alot of trouble finding good clipart or pic that don't take alot of work to make engravable. He suggested a program called Tiffen DX2 which has a filter or option that takes a photo and turns into a pencil drawing, does anyone know of any other programs out there that have this same option...It seems like an excellent program but it is way more then I need, I think the photo to pencil feature is all that I would use...I currently have photograve which doesn't work well for me because most of the artwork I use has to be shrank down to 1.5" height and width...like i said before I am in desperate need for anything that would help and you guys are the best source out there for engravers....HELP HELP HELP...does photo shop do this???

[Ron Hamilton]

Cheryl,
Photoshop has a sketch filter that will do what you want.
There are also some good tutorials on the web and utube that will assist you in getting the best results

Ron.

[Darren Null]

photograv should work for you. With any filter, you should get the image the size you are going to engrave before filtering; otherwise you are going to be disappointed in the results whatever you try.

Filter --> Resize :(
Resize --> Filter :D

The only exception to this is tracing an image into a vector image, as vector images scale. Even then, you'll have a lot happier time of it if your image to be traced is more-or-less the size you want to start with.

[Robert Eiffert]

I think the photo to pencil feature is all that I would use... does photo shop do this???

Take a look at GIMP. It offers most of the Photoshop features (and there are some addons that let you use custom PS filters) and is free.
Learning curve is about the same as PS, and there is good support (forums, etc) for assistance.

[Martin Boekers]

In Photoshop or Corel Photo Paint there is an area called actions.
Basically it's a script that will run with your image and do the step by step conversion to get a sketch effect.

There are literally thousands of free actions on the net that are easily downloaded to your software.

Do a search for photoshop actions sketch and I think you'll find what your looking for. Each one may be a bit different so find one that fits your needs.


Marty

[Dan Hintz]

I personally push Inkscape and Paint.net. They're both free, and Inkscape has a gazillion (+/- a few bajillion) free plug-ins made by users... post a request for a plug-in in the forums and someone will usually jump in and make it for you (maybe not by the next day, but people love to play with it).