Turn photo into sketch online

After a lot of research, I could finally develop a new sketch photo effect editor. It brought to Picture to People project a completely new level of non-realistic drawing photo editor.

With this photo sketch generator, each drawing is made of thousands of even millions of individual strokes, but they are chosen and rendered in much more intelligent and coherent ways, making possible a higher preservation of original fine details.

Moreover, this photo sketch algorithm has several important freedom degrees, so its interface has a lot of useful and interesting design parameters. This can help users to get artistic styles like made by using pencil, pen and ink, watercolor, pastel, charcoal, crayon, chalk, etc.

As a bonus feature, I added options to customize background and strokes colors, what helps to increase the plethora of available design effects.

By using this photo sketch maker, it's possible to produce, in a few seconds, pencil drawings that look carefully drawn by talented artists. Below you see a drawing created with this professional Photo to Pencil Sketch Converter Online.

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Colorful photo sketcher online

The second photo sketch maker I created to Picture to People project was based on other algorithm I researched myself.

After this development, it became possible to create colorful sketches from photos in a few seconds. Each final drawing is made of thousands or even millions of individual strokes. Each stroke is chosen based on local image properties and not set randomly.

To offer more stylized options, some color sketch styles have an interesting mix of colored and gray strokes. Besides, there is a special algorithm that takes care of drawing relevant contours.

I inserted in such algorithms the possibility to use the "smart strokes" technology. Based on the results from my test images, it seemed the right thing to do. Now I know it's a "dangerous" options for colorful images, because it can cause an unwelcome oversaturation in many cases. Anyway, you always have the option of disabling this feature.

Despite at that time my researches about non-realistic image rendering were just beginning, for sure this photo to color sketch effect was an important advance. Its development gave me new knowledge and insights to keep creating new algorithms. Besides, usually you don't see good quality procedural colored photo sketch effects out there. They usually just cheat using layer blending with textures, but it can generate poor results because of the low coherence with the line and color flow from original photo.

Now you see a sample of colorful sketch effect created online by using the Color Sketch Photo Editor.

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Photo sketcher online

The first Picture to People sketch effect generator was published online some years ago, and it was a big success. A few time after its release, it started receiving thousands of page views per week.

In my opinion, at that time it brought several innovative and advanced features, and some of them are amazing until current days, as for example:
- you can produce fast wild sketches or smart clean drawings from your photos by using the same photo app;
- each drawing is made of thousands of unique pencil strokes drawn individually and selected based on information extracted from the input photo. In other words, it's a really procedural sketch effect, and each image produces a different drawing. It's not a pseudo-effect always based on the same texture or pattern;
- you can choose between drawing styles with thick strokes or delicate small strokes;
- the designed sketch effects really look like drawings made by human hands.

Despite the cool features just cited, it's also worthy to mention that you can choose the paper and pencil color, what can be very useful in many situations. You can even use a feature I invented that time called "smart strokes" that can, in many cases, design an improved drawing.

Below I show you a photo and a sketch effect designed by using our first Photo Sketch Creator.

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How to create hatched drawings from photos

Have you ever tried our engraved photo drawing app that was released recently?

By using it, you can design very beautiful hatched drawings from photos. If you spend some time learning how the several configuration elements work, you can produce very artistic sketch drawings from most kinds of photos, even the most difficult to deal with.

As a special tip, beware this sketch effect app works better with input images that have a relative smooth look. Images that have many regions with high frequency textures can get overdrawn. To minimize this problem, you can choose the "Soft" drawing style and maybe apply a dark or pastel color improvement.

Below I show you a portrait transformed into a hatched drawing by using Picture to People Hatched Drawing Photo Editor.

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Create engraved drawing illustrations from photos online

I have released online a new drawing photo effect app in Picture to People site. I'm glad about this, because it's a cool addition to our famous list of drawing and illustration effect photo editors.

This new photo effect app can produce very beautiful and realistic engraved drawings from portraits, landscapes or any kind of images. By using this online photo editor, it's possible to get drawing with techniques similar to woodcut, engraving, etching, and scratchboard for example.

While I intend to research a specific sketch photo effect focused on hatching drawing styles, depending on the configurations you set and your input image, you can get hatched and crosshatched drawings by using this photo sketch app.

Besides, this online sketch app was developed mainly to create pen and ink drawings, but you also can imitate other medias and styles with this free sketch software.

Below you see a cool engraved illustration photo effect designed by using the Pen and Ink Engraved Drawing Photo Effect App.

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The best online photo editor

Now Picture to People offers a very powerful and easy to use Online Photo Editor. It was carefully planned to help you to get amazing professional photo effects easily as never before.

Our free online photo editor has many interesting features, like for example:

- hundreds of pre-configured professional image effects that work very well for a big range of photos and images;
- a lot of exclusive photo effects that can't be found in other graphic softwares;
- all in a unique place and you can see everything in a common dashboard. You can easily see all effects available before deciding what one you want to try;
- you edit your photos with minimum effort: all effects are one click away;
- tools grouped by kind of effect, so it's easy to find the effect you need;
- an easy way to go to the related configurable photo editor if you need a more customizable photo effect;
- it's totally safe: this tool never saves your images in hard drive, neither the result images.

The success of this software was so big that I'm now developing similar tools to create Facebook covers and Twitter banners. If you didn't know it yet, try now the Best Free Online Photo Editor.

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New Picture to People image upload policy

Recently we have improved the image upload policy for most of Picture to People effects. Below I explain the changes in details.

First of all, file size will not be a problem anymore. Now the input files can be up to 1 MB in size, what is five times bigger than the previous limit of 200 KB.

Second, but not less important, most P2P photo effects now deal with images in a different way. Previously, if the image had any dimension above a limit value (usually 1200 pixels), the request was refused.

Now our softwares are more versatile when evaluating if an image is suitable to be used as input. If the image size doesn't match our upload policy, it's reduced and so the effect is calculated (there is no more abortion caused by image size in pixels).

Currently, the four possible steps to decide what to make when a photo effect request is received are like below for most P2P tools:

1) Inspect the file coming from the request. If it is up to 1 MB in size, proceed. If it's bigger, reject the request and warn the user;

2) Evaluate the image total size in pixels. If the image has up to 1,000,000 (1 million) pixels, accept it "like is", no matter what its dimensions are, so calculate the effect. This rule turns eligible, for example, an image that has dimensions of 1800 x 500;

3) If the image has more than 1 million pixels, evaluate its dimensions. If both image dimensions (width and height) are up to 1200 pixels, accept the image "like is" and calculate the effect.

4) If the image has any dimension (width or height) bigger than 1200 pixels, reduce the image proportionally, so its bigger dimension becomes 1200 and the smaller reduces accordingly. Calculate the effect using this reduced image as input. Return the result image to the user, no matter it's smaller than the original one.

There are some P2P softwares that use different limits and make bigger image reductions, but they are few.

Now that our image input policy makes more sense, we hope you enjoy even more by using Picture to People project.


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Faster online sketch effects for photos

I keep doing a hard work concerning the optimization of low level Picture to People libraries.

I'm a little worried about a bad collateral effect coming from these improvements: a lot of source codes become much harder to understand and maintain. Anyway, I hope the speed increase pays off this undesirable consequence.

More photo effects already got faster, including the sketch photo effects and other related ones. Bellow you can see a photo and a related detailed pencil drawing produced online. It was created by using the Realistic Pencil Sketch Photo Effect and now this one can be generated 10% faster after the optimizations I already made.

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Online graffiti photo effect

Have you ever used the P2P graffiti photo generator published online some time ago?

I spent a lot of effort to offer many graffiti styles in this software, so it can be useful to all users, no matter the kind of art they like.

This tool can create very advanced artworks in many different backgrounds, always trying to keep maximum fidelity to the original photos. You even have very handy image improvement options to help you to get the most beautiful results according to the input image.

To inspire you to create amazing arts from your photos, I show below 3 different graffiti styles created by using the software (by using respectively a gradient, a painting and a sketch graffiti style). I have selected the same medium (a wall) in all cases to make easy a comparison of the graffiti styles. The images are beautiful, so it's worthy to click them to see in real size.

Try it by yourself at the Photo Graffiti Effect Generator page.

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Turn photos into realistic colorful pencil drawings

I have released a new free online software to create realistic pencil drawing photo effects.

 This new software is more powerful than the previous ones. Among its great features are:
- creates realistic drawings like made by human artists;
- high fidelity with the original images, even the detailed ones;
- has great configuration level, so you can simulate several drawing styles and media types;
- offers several ways to improve the input image for best results;
- has several beautiful stroke styles;
- offers nice control over outline drawing;
- offers fine grain selection for output colors.

Below you see a sample of the amazing colorful pencil drawings you can generate using this free online graphic software:

Use it at the Realistic Colorful Drawing Photo Effect page.

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Turning photos into professional pencil sketches

The tool that makes the most realistic pencil sketches and drawings is even better.

It received some more optimizations and now, depending on the configuration you set, produces even more fine, soft, detailed strokes, delivering high-fidelity as professional artists do.

Surprise your relatives and friends with amazing drawings by using the Realistic Pencil Sketch Photo Effect software (and don't forget to read the tips in the page to get the best experience using it): http://www.picturetopeople.org/photo_sketch/realistic_pencil_sketch_photo_effect.html

Below you see an example about professional pencil drawing made with the software (click to see in bigger size):

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Sketch your photo

I would like to show some more samples about what our Realist Sketch Photo Effect tool can make. Its astonishing detailed and fine grain strokes create very beautiful and realistic pencil drawings (or even other styles if you chance accordingly the interface parameters).

The example below shows how you can get a drawing with high fidelity even when the input is an image without high contrast.

This artistic software has been tested with photos having very different math properties and the results have never been disappointing. Sometimes the default configuration is not the best one, so it's a good idea to spend a little time learning how to use this amazingly powerful graphic tool.

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Sketch my photo

Have you ever thought about turning your preferred photos in amazingly realistic pencil sketches? Using Picture to People new online software you can.

Using the most professional sketch photo effect you can create drawings as good as if you were a professional portrait drawer.

Below I you show a nice example of how this tool can generate impressive coherent detailed strokes. To see more awesome samples, go to this page called The Best Pencil Sketch Photo Effects.





Try the best software to create pencil sketches from photos by going to the Realistic Pencil Sketch Photo Effect page.

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Realistic pencil sketch photo effect

Picture to People proudly presents the software that can generate the most beautiful, realistic and detailed sketches from photos, pretty in the same quality as the most talented artists. This tool can create reliable fine grain strokes to deliver perfect drawings as never seen before.

Changing the interface parameters, you can get different kinds of strokes, pressures and blends, so it's possible to produce a piece of art that looks like made by using pencil, pen and ink, charcoal, crayon, chalk, watercolor, pastel, etc.

Surf to the The Best Pencil Sketch Photo Effects to see several examples of the very realistic and impressively detailed drawings created by using this exciting software.

You also can use this new Picture to People tool by going to the Realistic Pencil Sketch Photo Effect page.

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Professional Photo Sketch

I would like to show at least one more example about how detailed Photo Sketch drawings can be. This tool is capable of generating really well calculated fine strokes.

You can choose among several drawing styles with different detail levels. When using it, if your input photo/image already has very well defined, high contrast regions, turn the "Use smart strokes" option off.

Below I show a photo and a pencil sketch created from it. You can click the images for a full size viewing. More examples can be seen at this Photo Sketch gallery.

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New professional effects to make pencil sketches from photos

I have released some days ago a new tool called Photo Sketch. It has state of art, next generation effects to transform even the more detailed photos into very realistic pencil sketches or drawings (like the ones professional artists make by hand).

Below I show you the result of turning a photo into a pencil sketch. This tool has several sketch effect styles to choose from, and each result image is composed by thousands or even millions of carefully chosen strokes. Depending on the style you select, these strokes can be very delicated and detailed.

You can transform your photos into pencil drawings as well. To see many other awesome examples about the power of this new Picture to People feature, have a good look at the Photo Sketch Gallery.

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Pencil sketch from photos (revisited)

The effect that gives me more feedback (by email) is the pencil sketch effect made from photos. Many people would like to use a nice picture to generate a draw that really likes made by human hands.

Since a lot of people have been asking me for other results of this tool, I decided to put here another example.

Now I will make this tool available for use with text. When It's ready I will show some results here.

Transforming photos in pencil sketches

I have just finished the first version of the sketch effect. Now you can transform a photo in a pencil sketch.

I intend to make this kind of effect in other flavors, like representing other drawing styles. I'm still researching about that.

Concerning the example above, for best results, I made a simple preprocessing of original photo before applying the effect:

- made it gray;

- improved its contrast.

As you can see, the result gives a nice sketch with no falsehood. The pencil strokes are really there.

Sketch effect

Some people have been asking me about an effect for transforming photos in sketches.

They told me there are several tutorials in the Internet about that: you combine some traditional filters to get something like a pencil sketch, but the results are poor. This bad quality is not by losing information, but because the result does NOT really look like a sketch made by human hands.

I checked it out around the Internet and could see they have some reason.

This way, I decided it's worthy to prepare a final effect to transform photos in sketches.

More about that in some days.