Turning a Picture into an old Conté Sketch

Here, i show you how to turn a picture or painting into a conté sketch. We have the original picture on the left and what you should end up with when you follow this tutorial on the right.

Ok. Lets get started. Open up a blank file in Photoshop. Go to Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Colour. Rename the layer Grey (instead of Colour Fill 1). Now go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise and enter an amount of 7% as shown. Set it to Gaussian and ensure it is Monochromatic.

You will get something like this.

Now, drag your image onto this file and resize it to fit using the free transform option ( Ctrl + T)

Right click this layer in the layer window ( F7), go to layer properties, and rename it 'Ship'. Press Ctrl +J to duplicate the ship layer. Similarly, rename the new layer 'Edges'. Go to Filter > Stylize > Glowing Edges. Enter the parameters shown.

You will get some thing like this

Next, press Ctrl + I to invert colours. We need only Black and white shades on our image. So press Ctrl + Shift + U to Desaturate the image. You should get something like this.This filter is used to highlight the outlines of the image.

Hide the edges layer by pressing the tiny eye next to it in the layer window (F7). Now click on the Ship layer. Go to Filter > Artistic > Rough Pastels. Enter the following values and click ok.

Press Ctrl + Shift + U to desaturate the layer. You're image should look like this.

Next, duplicate the ship layer twice by pressing Ctrl + J twice. Rename one as 'Cutout' and one as 'Pencil'. On the cutout layer, apply the following filter. Filter > Artistic > Cutout and enter the following parameters.

You should get something like this.

Now, hide the Cutout layer like (by clicking the eye button next to it). Set your foreground and background colours to grey and white respectively as shown on the left. Select the Pencil layer you created earlier. Go to Filter > Artistic > Coloured Pencil. Enter the paramaters shown below. Click OK.

After using the filter, the layer will look like this.

Now Rearrange you layers in this order, make all of them visible and watch, as the magic begins.

Change the blending mode of the Edges layer to Soft Light as shown.

Similarly, change the blending mode of the Cutout layer also to Soft Light, the mode of the Pencil Layer to Multiply and the mode of the Ship layer to Hard Light. You're image will be transformed to something like this.

Now, use the Eraser tool with a brush of your choice and rub off the darker regions in the Cutout and Pencil layers. Take your time and make sure you're happy with what you see. This was what i got.

To merge everything to a new layer, press Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E. Now, to give it an oldish effect, go to Image > Adjustments > Color Balance > ( or press Ctrl + B) and enter these values.