Converting pic to line art

I'm about to purchase some scale models I want to photograph, then turn the photos into line art so I can make alterations to them. Is it easier to turn a picture that is mostly white or very colorful into line art using Photoshop?
Thanks guys!

From a quick test:
Load in your file.
Save As to a new name to protect the original.
Increase the contrast.
In CS-4, go to Filters/Styilize/Trace Contour
OR
Filters/Styilize/Find Edges.
Both will need fine tuning to get as close as possible to what you want.
Desaturate to turn it grey scale.
Adjust Levels to get the cut off as close as possible to where you want it.
Erase out what you don't want.
I was using a low contrast file and did get something that was line artish both ways.
Bill

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Convert photo to line art?

Dear Forum,
I am trialing Elements and Illustrator but cannot find a solution in help or the forums, or any book at Borders, so I hope someone can help. I am looking for a way to convert photos (JPEGS) of flowers to black line art......like a coloring book, not just black and white or grayscale or sylhouette. I will then print out the line art (1-2 pixel black line art) to clear acetate for use as a positive original for creating a silkscreen via photo emulsion exposure (and then silkscreen printing the line art to fabric for hand painting). I am doing this by hand now.....place a sheet of acetate over the photo and outlining "edges" by eye with a fine Sharpie, then using that as the positive original. See attached file for an example. The line art needs to be relatively detailed ( e.g. petals, stamen, leaves) but not absolutely perfect as I only need to print guide lines on fabric for subsequent hand painting. It seems easy to do by "eye", tracing edges of color or tone change, but I have not figured out how to make that happen in Elements or Illustrator. Of course I have only had the trial for a couple days, and have used live trace, posterization, etc, but have not been lucky. Please point me in the right direction. If I can make this happen with an Adobe product, then I will buy it.....I have hundreds of photos to convert. Thanks.....Bob

If you use Threshold, you can add some gaussian blur to the image to make the edges smoother. You can also add a brightness/contrast adjustment layer between the blurred image and the threshold layer to fine tune the edges.
If you have Windows, you might want to look at Medhi's Fine Threshold filter (freeware) found here:
http://www.mehdiplugins.com/english/finethreshold.htm
Edit: You could also use Find Edges on the image first; desaturate it; then use a threshold adjustment layer. Go back to the Find Edges layer and add gaussian blur to taste. To further fine tune, slip a brightness/contrast layer between the blurred image and the threshold to control line thickness/detail. (FWIW, I would make a copy of the Find Edges layer and blur the duplicate so if you change your mind you don't have to start the project from scratch.)

Converting photo to line art?

I have Photoshop Elements 5.0 and want to know if there is a way to take a photograph and convert it into a line art image. I have tried a combination of a few different filters and have not been able to get the results I am looking for. Any thoughts?

It is not easy, and works best if image does not have a great deal of texture. Try this:
Open image
Duplicate background layer
Filter>other>High pass. Want small radius
Filter>sketch>Notepaper. Try image balance=25, Grain=0, Relief=0
Filter>adjustments>threshold. Work slider to get black & white image
Use pencil tool to get rid of stray pixels

How to convert image to line art

I'm trying to get a grey scale image to be just plain black and white, no grey tones. Anyone know how I would do this?
Thanks.

Threshold in adjustments. You might try blurring a little, or create two or three adjustment layers with different thresholds and target them to different areas of the image. Eyes, hair, body. Wheel wells, windows, car. Like that.

Can you change image to line art?

Can you take an image (photograph of a person for example) and convert it to line art? If so, can you convert the whole picture to a black and white (no shades of gray) line art?
Thanks!

"Line art " can actually mean many things. Do you mean outlining in Black and White? There are some Actions on the Adobe Exchange that will do that or use Find Edges or Graphic Pen or some of the other Filters. There are also plugins you can get like Outliner.
Or you might want to use Adobe Streamline to trace it in vector paths.

Convert photos of buildings to line art.

I am looking for a program that can convert photos of buildings to crisp, clean line art with no shadings or noise. Is there a program that can do this? If not what would come closest to what I need and I can test it.
Thank you.
Lisa

Here is a way to do it in Photoshop.
http://luminous-landscape.com/new-page-9/

Convert original image to sharp Line art?

Dear All,
I have a image i want to convert orginal image to sharp lineart how can i do photoshop CS3 please help me.
one reference image is attached

As others have said I dont think you will be able to convert the image you have posted to look like the result you want from the other image you posted, the detail in the original is just to high. I use the method described below for doing my line art in Photoshop and it works well but you seem to want to reduce your image to a much simplier representation. I have used this site before, it used to be free but now I think you only get a couple of free credits when you join, convert a photo to line drawing, quite simple to use and you can select to remove noise which might reduce the complexity of the original image.
In Photoshop try:
Duplicate original layer
Change top layer color mode to color dodge
Invert top layer
Apply Gaussian blur (choose low pixel radius for less detail so reducing image complexity)
Add adjustment layer and set saturation to be -100
Retouch anywhere with brush tool to complete

Is there a filter or plug-in for Photoshop CS6 that will allow me to convert a photo into line art?

Image conversion to line art...how in Photoshop?

Good day!
You may want to test the Adobe Illustrator trial.
Regards,
Pfaffenbichler

Line Art Conversions

Does anyone have a PS3 tutorial for converting product images to line art? I'm trying to create close-up views of small products (glass vials, screws etc.) for a few different brochures my client wants to create.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Ken

I am a Freehand user from 1993 until 2003 when I switched from PC to Mac for my own machine. Macromedia never offered a crossgrade price and I never bought FGS for the Mac. I've grudgingly used Illustrator since 1995--most of the places I've worked have been Illustrator shops. I garnered a good deal of experience with Illustrator over that time and hated it the whole time, but pretty much had no choice after the Macromedia buyout. Since then I have little justification for investing money in Freehand MX and none for convincing employers and clients to switch over to a "dead" application. So I've now been using Illustrator and cursing at it for a couple years
So keep that in mind when I say this: CS4 is the first version of Illustrator that I'm actually happy to move to. If there were a future for Freehand, I very well might still be moving to Illustrator now. From my perspective, CS4 is where Illustrator moved from behind Freehand in every way except market position to being ahead of Freehand.
Or I could have said this more concisely as Freehand fan says: Illustrator CS3, Boo. Illustrator CS4 Yay!.

How can I easily change black line art to a colour? (Or color?)

I have line art on a transparent layer. That is, it's not part of a white layer, but just black on nothing. I want to easily change that to a colour without changing the quality of the line. I know I can put a screen layer above it with a colour and that makes the black coloured, but it only shows up if I flatten it on to white. Otherwise, that's exactly the look I want, just not on a flattened white layer. I need to keep the line on the transparent layer so that I can paint under it, so I can't flatten it on to white. I also don't want to select the line and fill it as that significantly changes the quality of the line. I just want to change the colour of the line without chaning it's density, or any pixels. Any idea how to do this?

I believe your layer with lines has pure black pixels with transparency producing it's gray appearance. An adjustment can't make black blacker than black
A mask is grayscale without transparency. So if you convert the transparency to a mask, you have grayscale pixels in the mask which can be affected by an adjustment. The result will be a change in the appearance of the masked layer.

Thin white line between line art and live paint fill?

I am using live paint to paint cartoon character illustrations. The artwork is brought into Illustrator CS3 and live traced. Then I convert it to a live paint group and use the paint bucket to fill. Everything looks fine no matter how much I zoom in. If I bring the AI file into Photoshop CS6 I can see a thin white line between the black line art and the fill. This is most noticeable where black meets black. I can also see this sometimes in file previews while browsing through files. If the white line cannot be seen in Illustrator is the file ok? I did just upgrade to CS6 if that would make a difference.
Thank you for any help.

If the white line cannot be seen in Illustrator is the file ok?
Without knowing specifics,nobody knows.
"Okay" for what?
If it looks okay to you in Illustrator, then it's okay for viewing in Illustrator.
If the export of it does not look okay in Photoshop at 1:1 or higher zoom, then it's probably not okay for whatever you're going to do with that raster image.
If it's printed to a low-res composite printer, then it may be okay, because the printer may not be able to resolve the whitish pixels.
If it's printed for commercial (color-separated) reproduction, it may not be okay, depending on the scale at which it will be printed, and on other considerations partially described below.
The autotrace routine does not build traps. Typically, when you color-fill cartoon line art manually, you don't make the shapes that define the fills merely "kiss" the black line work, as would the default treatments of a stupid autotrace. The black line work typically overprints the fills, thereby creating printing traps.
Suppose a portion of your cartoon is a hand-drawn closed circle. The black line work is irregular; it varies in width, having been drawn with a marker or a brush. The circle is colored in with a medium green. There are no sloppy gaps in the original between the green and the black.
You scan it and autotrace it. Unless you apply some deliberate care to make it do otherwise, the autotrace is going to create a compound path, filled with black, and with no stroke; and a green simple path which (hopefully) exactly "kisses" (abuts) the black path. Adobe's on-screen antialiasing of the edge where the two colors abut may or may not cause your monitor to display a faint whitish or grayish sliver between the two colors.
Similarly, Photoshop's rasterization of it, or the rasterization of a raster export filter may do the same, and may actually result in some off-color pixels along the edge. (Your description of the scenario kinda raises the question of why you are auto-tracing something that you're then just going to rasterize in Photoshop anyway. Why do that? Why not just work with the scan in Photoshop?.)
So let's leave Photoshop out of the picture and assume you are autotracing it because you want vector artwork. You zoom way in to see if the whitish sliver enlarges. It doesn't, so you assume it's just an aberation of Illustrator's on-screen antialising. And then someone tells you you're in the clear. But are you? Not so fast.
Let's assume the artwork is destined for commercial (color-separated) printing. Further assume the color of the autotraced black is 100% K, and the color of the autotraced green is 100Y 50C. Three inks involved. None of those three inks are shared between the two objects. So even if the paths do, in fact, perfectly abut, there is no "wiggle room" built in for the minor alignment shifts that almost aways do occur on press.
Bottom line: Even if you do determine that the common antialiasing aberations that frequently occur on-screen in Adobe apps is just that—just an onscreen aberation, that does not necessarily mean your file is suitable for commercial color-separated reproduction.
First, you need to understand that autotracing is not the one-click, instant "conversion" of a raster image to vector artwork that far too many think it to be. Just like everything else, you don't just launch a program like Illustrator, start autotracing things willy-nilly without understanding what's really going on. Just like anyting else, you can use an autotrace feature intelligently or...well...not.
You have options. Illustrator provides an auto-trapping feature. Read up on it in the documentation so you understand what it's all about. Alternatively, you can expand the results of your autotrace, select all the black linework and apply a composite color that includes 100% K and reasonable percentages of C, M, and Y (a so-called "rich black"). Or,depending on the artwork and the desired results, you may consider doing the autotrace as centerlines so you have stroked paths, not just filled paths for the linework. That way, using the flood fill (so called LivePaint) will cause the auto-created fill objects to extend to the paths, not just to the edges of their strokes. Then set the linework to overprint.
At any rate, if you are doing this professionally, you need to read up on the principles and practices of trapping and color separation.
JET

Change color of scanned line art

I'm want to scan a line art of a leaf, make the white background transparent, and change the black lines to red. I can scan the art to Photoshop, get rid of the white background, but I can't change the black lines to red. After scanning, the background layer is locked and won't allow editing.I tried scanning as a bitmap, b&w scalable, 16 color, etc. Nothing works.

Image > mode > grayscale, then image > mode > RGB. Then create a solid fill layer layer > new fill layer > solid color. Pick your color and set that layer's blend mode to screen.
Not sure how you're deleting the background, while keeping the leaf on the background layer. But if you make it a grayscale or RGB image, you should be able to convert the background layer by going to layer > new > layer from background.
If you do manage to get the layer off the background you can clip the solid fill layer to the leaf layer by having the solid fill layer active and pressing ctrl-alt-g, or by alt-clicking the space between the two layers in the layers panel (you'll see you cursor change).

Darker Places on line art make colors a different shade?!

So yesterday I was coloring line-art that had some dark areas in it with bright colors and it worked perfectly fine with the "background copy" layer on multiply and still the bright colors worked perfectly fine. Now for some reason When areas in the line-art are dark the bright colors are darker on layer 1! (not background copy" I have restarted my computer (mac) and force quit the application and tried again but nothing is working! I have no idea what is going on and this is very weird. The link below shows EXACTLY what is happening on my screen . The locked background layer is on "normal" Background copy is on "multiply" and Layer 1 is on normal! This was not going on yesterday and I am very worried. Note that The color I am using is bright red and it turns dark red on the picture. I am using a screen shot I took from the picture I found. But the bright red is perfectly fine on the white area. Please help I am using PSE9.
Link to what is going on: http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=16bzog3&s=8#.U4ON6i_TbTc
- DrawingLover524

Open the file with the line art
Place a blank layer above this
Use the brush tool to paint on this layer. The brush tool utilizes the foreground color.
By using a small brush, you should be able to paint within the confines of the black lines. If you need to tidy up, use the eraser tool.
If you want to try with an adjustment layer, do this:
Open file with the line art
Open a color fill adjustment layer above this with the color of choice
Temporarily reduce the layer opacity of the adjustment layer so that you can see through it to visualize the line art
Left click on the mask (the white rectangle)
With a black brush, paint where you don't want color. If you go too far, correct with a white brush. Black hides, white reveals.
Reset adjustment layer opacity to 100% when finished
Tips:
D on keyboard sets color chips to default
X toggles between foreground/background colors
The bracket keys on the keyboard increase/decrease the brush cursor size
Sent from my iPad

Photo to line art, help needed

Hello - I'm struggling with a rather simple task: turning this image (http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/3641/limb1.jpg) into basic, b+w, vector line art. I'm not sure of the best approach. I've considered making a grid of squares and warping it to fit the shape, or using the pen to more or less trace the image...unfortunately, the image is poorly shot + lit so I can't use any automated trace tools. I'd love some help if someone knows a good approach!
Necessary info: os x 10.5, CS2.

I assume you have a high res version of the photo. Working in Photoshop, I would adjust levels to bring out the squares. Then use dodge and burn tools to further isolate them (you may have to paint in a couple). Then you can probably get a decent auto-trace. Of course, by then you could have traced it.
To trace it you could simply draw lines horizontally and vertically, in line with the squares, then convert them to a live paint object and fill in the intersecting squares.

Pagemaker line art loses quality when opened in ID

Hi,
I have a small booklet which I created some years ago in PageMaker 6.5. Each page is 11 x 17 inches black and white. I would like to redo some of the pages and create new ones in InDesign. I have at this point no significant experinece working with In Design.
Initially I was just hopeful to be able to print the old pages from InDesign since the computer with PageMaker is probably on limted time. When I try to open the PageMaker file they do open, but the line art illustrations which were "fine line" art of boat profiles turn into very crude looking art. They look like they were drawn with a crayon. Is there something that is controlling the quality of these illustrations when opened or imported? Is there any way to get back to at least the original quality that I see in PageMaker?
I'd like to have the original pages to at least use as a starting pong.
Thanks,
chuck

Hi
Thank you all for your help. I thought I'd post a short response to what I've since found out and a link that was helpful in doing so. As I said because of my lack of experience both with PageMaker and with InDesign I reslly didn't understand how the original PageMaker files were set up nor did I remember how I originally made them.
Searching, I found this link called "Processing Adobe Pagemaker Files for Conversion to Adobe InDesign". http://www.ideastraining.com/PDFs/ProcessingPgMkrFiles.pdf
It walked me through identifying what I had and how to correct it. It turns out that the page had a number of embedded graphics that had links that were no capable of updating for various reasons. A number of the graphics were also in .gif format which apparently InDesign didn't accommodate. So in trying to open these pages, InDesign dumped the original graphics and only left a crude tiff image which is what I was seeing.
I could try to salvage the sheets, but there are so many small problems that I think it's best to bite the bullet and just redo them. Going through the excercise with the help of the link above, however, 1) educated me in what I really had and 2) helped me to locate the original graphics which were on my computer but I didn't recognize. They were all clearly identified in the Links Manager. I simply didn't realize they had originally been linked. That at least allows me to find the original art then message or convert it as necessary in Photoshop or Illustrator.
I've made a template and now I'm just going to start one page at a time.
I just wanted to post the link above in the hopes it may help someone else.
Again thanks for the quick response and thoughtful replies to my question.
chuck

Converting pic to line art

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