Here are some variations on sketches with Photoshop CS.

http://www.thelightsright.com/samples/romancoliseum.jpg
http://www.thelightsright.com/samples/romancoliseum2.jpg
http://www.thelightsright.com/samples/romancoliseum3.jpg

Comments are welcome. I'm still refining my techniques.

They're all done quick and easy in Photoshop CS.

Cheers,

Mitch

I've done similar techniques..only better.... Just jokin' Mitch. Very nice. Care to share some info?

Cheers
Dave

Mitch:

Relatively loose strokes and a fair amount of visible 'canvas' or 'paper' are characteristics I ususally associate with a sketch. (Disclaimer: I've never been to art school. Just my uneducated interpretation.) When viewed beyond closeup, to me these look like photos to which grain has been applied for artistic effect.

Despite not saying sketch to me, you've definitely achieved a pleasing look. I applaud the effort and the framing is especially impressive.

~Danny~

I'm glad to share, Danny.

The gallery frame look is described in one of my Learning Galleries. There is also a Photoshop action for making the frame and font presets for the fonts.

I'll share a few techniques over the next couple of days for giving a photographic image those sketch-like looks.

The technique below will be the "Tip of the Week" next week on my site.

Here's the imahe:

http://www.thelightsright.com/samples/romancoliseum.jpg

This technique uses the Graphic Pen filter in Photoshop CS. I'll mention the steps here. Next week's "Tip of the Week" will walk you through the steps with images, so you can see how everything works together.

The image does not use one just one instance of the Graphic Pen filter. It makes three passes with the filter, and two of them use a layer mask.

Graphic Pen: Stroke Length 5, LightDark Balance 50
Graphic Pen: Stroke Length 10, LightDark Balance 50 (50% Opacity)
Graphic Pen: Stroke Length 15, LightDark Balance 50 (50% Opacity)

I applied a Reveal All layer mask to the Graphic Pen layers with Stroke Length settings of 10 and 15. I painted with Black using an airbrush and a soft edge brush with 50% gray to further reduce the longer strokes for the trees in the background, the people outside the coliseum, and the bales of pine straw.

The combination of multiple passes with the Graphic Pen filter, opacity, and layer masks gives you a lot of control over stroke length in various parts of an image.

Color was added back to the image by duplicating the Background layer and placing the duplicate after the Graphic Pen layers. The opacity was reduced to 35%.

I applied a bit of Dodge&Burn using an overlay layer filled with 50% gray. I painted with black and a soft edge brush to darken the lamp posts a bit and also the trees between the first lamp post and the coliseum.

I added a saturation adjustment layer to boost the saturation just a bit.

I finished by making a new layer, merging all of the layers into it, and then using the Sponge tool to desaturate some of the trees in the background a bit. Some of them has a bit of color fringing that was easily removed in this way.

I'm sorry. This sort of thing does not lend itself to an action. Oh, you can make one to add two or three layers with different Graphic Pen settings. But I added some steps that will be common enough, I guess, but are really specific to the image. Same with the layer masks. They are very specific to the image. Some tehcniques are not well-suited for actions. ;)

I hope you find this technique helpful. I'll describe a couple of more over the next couple of days. They each combine multiple filters.

Cheers,

Mitch

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