How To Make A Line Drawing
With Photoshop

This is a really great way to use Photoshop to make a line drawing. At the end you can even adjust how you want your drawing to look!

Once you have your nice new line drawing then you can save it as a jpeg and then paint it in Painter 2.

This is the image I have chosen to turn into line art.

1. Open your image in Photoshop and turn it into a black and white image - Image > Adjustments > Desaturate. If you are using Photoshop Elements - Image > Mode > Grayscale.

2. Copy your image onto a new layer - either Ctrl-J (Windows) or Cmd-J (MAC) or drag the background layer onto the new layer icon in the layers palette. Now you have the background image and the copy of your image in the layers palette.

   
   
   

3. Click on the Background copy layer so that it is highlighted. Now you are going to invert the image - Ctrl-I (Windows) or Cmd-I (MAC). Your Background copy will now look like a black and white negative.

   
   
   

4. The next step is to change the Blending Mode of the Background copy layer to Color Dodge. You do this by clicking the downward pointing arrow next to the word Normal and scrolling down to Color Dodge.

   
   
   

5. Oops - suddenly your picture has disappeared and all you have is a white canvas. Well we can fix that. Select Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and up pops a dialogue box with a slider - and - you now have your image returning. This is where your creativity starts to flow. Move the Radius slider back and forth until you are happy with your line drawing and then click OK. Note: you can also choose Motion Blur and adjust both the Radius and the Angle of the blur.

6. Now select Layers > Flatten Image and then save as a jpeg file.

Here is how my VW picture came out following this procedure.





If necessary you can open your new image in Photoshop and tune up your digital line art and then have some fun with it by opening it in Corel Painter 2 and do some painting with the Digital Water Color brush.





Return to Painter main page from Line Drawing page.

Return to Home Page from Photoshop line art page.


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