Photoshop Tutorial: Making Custom Coloring in Pages

Creating sketches or drawings from photos is a fun way to keep the kids entertained on school holidays. You can make personalised Christmas or birthday cards, books or placemats. A nicely positioned sketch can make the difference between a good business brochure and a fantastic one. There is no end to the fun you can have with these techniques.

In this tutorial I will outline four various ways of producing a coloring in page. In each method, I start with the same photo, open in Photoshop.

Stamp filter method for creating photoshop coloring pages
The easiest but least effective is the stamp filter in Photoshop
Ensure layer is active
Go to Filter , Sketch, stamp

Photocopy method for creating Photoshop coloring pages
Make copy of the layer
Go to Filter, sketch, Photocopy, adjust detail and darkness. I used 5 for both detail and darkness
Go to Layer, New adjustment layer, levels, adjust
Adjust levels input slides until desired effect is achieved. I used 75, 2.5 and 254.

Find edges method for creating photoshop coloring in pages
I find this method a little cumbersome but it can produce some really good results
Go to Filter, sharpen, sharpen edges. Sharpen the edges 3 times.
Go to filter, stylise, find edges
Go to new adjustment level. Bring the hue and saturation down to minimum
Go to new adjustment level
Go to adjust brightness and contrast, I gave both +10

Blur method for creating Photoshop coloring in pages
Out of all the methods, this is my favourite. I think it represents the clearest and is great for colouring in.

Go to image, adjustment, hue and saturation
Bring hue and saturation to minimum. If you want a grayscale picture, this is the best way to do it.
Duplicate the picture on a new layer
Go to image, adjustment, invert top layer
Set the Blending mode to color dodge. At this point the screen will seem to go almost completely white.
Go to filter, Blur, Gaussian blur
Set the radius until you like it, I did 9

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