I tried to keep old photo look and therefore decided not to remove all the scratches and imperfections. Besides, I added a little color to increase the effect.

Move you mouse over the image to see restoration result.

Never ever scan grayscale photos in grayscale scanner mode!

Though the image may have no color, ALWAYS scan in RGB. That may depend on the particular scanner, but usually grayscale-scanned images are much more noisy.

Just move your mouse over the image to compare amount of digital noise when scanning in grayscale vs scanning in RGB.

Scanning resolution is not so critical. Usually 300 dpi is enough.

Step 2. Use “Levels” to adjust contrast.

Press CTRL-L for “Levels” adjustment. Old photos usually have rather narrow dynamic range. Move white point and black point markers to the positions where histogram begins to show presense some light or dark pixels.

First of all use Filter - Noise - Dust and Scratches to remove most little scratches. I used radius of 4 pixels and 20 levels for threshold.

Dust and Scratches filter settings are very individual and vary greatly depending on the photo. For your own old photo retouching first choose the smallest radius that removes most scratches and then adjust threshold to remove artifacts.

Then use Patch tool and Healing Brush tool to work out more damaged areas. Press J and SHIFT-J to switch between the tools.

Step 4. Sharpen the image.

Great tool for sharpening (and most used one) is Unsharp Mask, or USM.

I used it twice. First with large radius and small amount for increasing overall image contrast (10%, 60 pixels). Then with small radius and considerable amount to increase local contrast (40%, 1.6 pixels).

Move your mouse over the image to compare “before” and “after” sharpening.

Step 5. Adjust Shadows/Highlights.

Shadow/Highlight is very powerful tool for quick correction of darker image areas. I used it to emphasize “sunny” feeling. The most important Shadow/Highlight parameter is Shadows amount (I used 15% for this image). You may also experiment with Tonal Width amount.

Press CTRL-U for Hue/Saturation adjustment. I checked “Colorize” and set Hue to 40 and Saturation to 10.

For our image we will use Lightness channel in LAB mode to convert to B/W.

Select Image - Mode - Lab Color.

LAB is perhaps the most complicated Photoshop image mode. Its main advantage is that lightness information is separated from color information. We will use Lightness channel to create base for our B/W image.

Select Image - Mode - RGB Color. Press CTRL-V to paste contents of Lightness channel as a new layer. Rename new layer to “Base”.

Click “Highlights” layer and select Layer - New Adjustment Layer - Curves. Check “Use previous layer to create clipping mask”. Then use curve like this:

Then click “Shadows” layer and select Layer - New Adjustment Layer - Curves. Check “Use previous layer to create clipping mask”. Use curve like this:

Image after “contrast boost”:

Short summary of the tutorial:

• Convert to LAB mode and Lightness channel to create B/W image.
• Use adjustment layers for levels, curves and other corrections instead of “plain” curves, levels etc.
• Boost contrast using two layers for shadows and highlights. Top layer blending mode should be set to “Mupltiply”
• Add little color using Hue/Saturation adjustment layer

And after 5 minutes of “playing” with it:

Step 1. Duplicate the background.

Press CTRL-J to duplicate ‘Background’ layer. Rename new layer to ‘Caricature base’ (I prefer to give meaningful names to layers always, even if you have only 3 - 4 of them; and if you have 5-10 layers proper naming is “a must”).

Step 2. Use Filter - Liquify.

Liquify filter is a powerful tool to create caricature images. It’s very easy - use tools on the left and set parameters on the right.

Here are some tips for Liquify filter:

• to change brush size quickly move your mouse over ‘Brush Size’ words (on the right) and drag
• set Brush Rate to 40-80 to control speed of “static” changes when you hold mouse button and not moving your mouse (Bloat and Pucker tools)
• set Brush Pressure to 40-50 to have more control over distortions when you move mouse
• make a lot of short and gentle strokes, not long drags
• CTRL-ALT-Z to undo, CTRL-SHIFT-Z to redo

Step 3. Duplicate liqufied layer.

Press CTRL-J to duplicate “Caricature Base” layer, then rename new layer to “Contours”.

Step 4. Create contours to make image look drawn.

The quickest way to create contours is Filter - Stylize - Find Edges. Then press CTRL-SHIFT-U to desaturate.

Step 5. Set Blending mode to Multiply.

The last step. Set blending mode of “Contours” layer to Multiply. Also try to change layer opacity to 60-90%.

One more example of using “caricature sketch” technique:

All keyboard shortcuts are for PC. I don’t have a Mac, but as far as I know the main difference is use of the COMMAND key and OPTION key on a Mac instead of the CTRL key and the ALT key on a PC.

Select the ‘Background’ layer and press CTRL-J to duplicate it. Rename the new layer to ‘Sketch’. Move the ‘Sketch’ layer to the top of the layer stack by pressing CTRL-SHIFT-].

If you think there is too much shadows in the image you may want to use Image - Adjustments - Shadow/Highlight and ‘play’ with Shadow amount value (I used 50%).

Desaturate the ‘Sketch’ layer (CTRL-SHIFT-U).

Add some noise. Select Filter - Noise - Add Noise. Set noise amount to 10-15%, noise distribution to Gaussian and check the ‘Monochromatic’.

Set blending mode of the ‘Sketch’ layer to ‘Multiply’.

Select Layer - Layer Mask - Hide All (’Sketch’ layer should be active). You will notice a black rectangle appeared near the ‘Sketch’ thumbnail in the layer palette. It’s a mask; it is completely black and it means that all the contents of the sketch layer is now hidden.

Now we should choose a good brush. I like ‘Dry Media Brushes’ set. Right-click on the image and load this brush set (click on the image to see the screenshot). Choose a brush with a well defined texture.

Set brush opacity to 20-30%.

Please note: the mask thumbnail on the side of the ‘Sketch’ layer should be selected, not the layer itself!

Set the foreground color to white. Remember: white is used to reveal (’draw’) the image, and black to hide (’erase’).

Now the preparation is over. It’s time to ‘draw’ your sketch! Make many strokes coming in one direction. Begin from the most important areas of the face drawn by a small brush.

Try to follow the direction of lines of the original image. Use ‘[’ or ‘]’ keys to change brush size. Alter the opacity - from light and thin strokes to heavy dark ones. Feel like an artist!

If you are not skilled at drawing - don’t be afraid. In fact, you are not actually ‘drawing’ but instead you are revealing the image hidden under the mask. So don’t be afraid to make any mistakes.

Change the color to black to ‘erase’ the unwanted strokes. I recorded some of my ‘drawing’ - you may find it here (requires Flash player, 3.8 Mb).

Duplicate the ‘Sketch’ layer (CTRL-J) to add some contrast (blending mode should be set to ‘Multiply’). The hair areas will become darker. But the faces will be darken too, and we don’t want that.

Set the foreground color to black (we will be ‘erasing’), choose a soft round brush from the basic brushes and set brush opacity to 50%.

Make sure that the mask of the top layer is selected, not the layer itself. Draw over the areas that are too dark.

It is definitely not a masterpiece, but it really looks like as if it was drawn by hand (at least I hope so). Not bad for 15-minutes ‘drawing’.

You may change the color and texture of the ‘paper’ at any time. You may also work with your outline (adjust contrast, manually draw or erase some lines) and you have much control over the ’sketch’ itself.

That’s all for this tutorial. Hope you had some fun! Next tutorials will be devoted to other styles of ’sketching’ including working with color. Come back soon!

All keyboard shortcuts are for PC. I don’t have a Mac, but as far as I know the main difference is use of the COMMAND key and OPTION key on a Mac instead of the CTRL key and the ALT key on a PC.

The result is very ‘dirty’. We can see a lot of unnecessary details. You may try to remove these details by using Brightness/Contrast adjustment.

Select Image - Adjustments - Brightness/Contrast and try to increase both brightness and contrast values. Some unnecessary details may disappear, but we will lose the wanted details also. In our case, Find Edges filter does not produce satisfactory result. Do not delete ‘Find Edges’ layer - we will use it for comparison later.

Set layer blending mode to ‘Multiply’. Turn off layer visibility.

Desturate ‘Glowing edges’ layer (CTRL-SHIFT-U), then invert it (CTRL-I). You may also use Brightness/Contrast to remove the unnecessary details. The result is much better than with Find Edges filter. Set layer blending mode to ‘Multiply’. Turn off layer visibility.

If you zoom in, you will see that the filter creates too ‘digital’ look. You may want to use Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur with radius 1 or 2 to blur the layer a little.

Invert the ‘Photocopy’ layer. Use Brightness/Contrast to remove unnecessary details (I used 22 for Brightness and 29 for Contrast).

Set layer blending mode to ‘Multiply’. Do not turn off layer visibility.

Create a new group, give it a name ‘Outline’ and move 4 layers created to that group. ‘Photocopy’ layer should be visible.

We will do the following steps convert it into a natural-looking sketch:

• Create a ‘paper ‘ using 3 layers
• Create a ‘pencil’ outline (we will try 4 different methods to do that)
• Create a ’sketch’ itself by using a layer with mask and ‘directional’ strokes

Below these steps are explained in detail.

We have to enlarge our photo. It will not give us additional details, but will make many Photoshop filters work better (for example, adding noise to a small image will result in bad-looking, too grainy noise; the large image will be Ok).

The rule is – the larger your image, the better the result will be.

Select Image - Image size and set the size to 2000×2666 pixels.

We will use 3 layers to control the appearance of our ‘digital paper’:

• Solid color fill layer to control the basic color
• Pattern fill layer to control texture
• Additional layer to control slight color variation.

After pressing OK in the layer name dialog choose the basic color for your background. Try several different colors wtih very low saturation (typically less than 10). Later you can always change basic color by double clicking the ‘Basic Color’ layer thumbnail.

After pressing OK you will probably see the default pattern set. It is not what we want. We have to change the pattern set to ‘Grayscale Paper’ (see the screenshot).

You may try different ‘Grayscale paper’ patterns and choose what you like most. I chose ‘Fibers 2′ pattern scaled to 700%.

Set blending mode for the ‘Basic Texture’ layer to ‘Multiply’ and lower its opacity to 20%.

Select Layer - New - Layer and type in a name ‘Slight adjustments’. Select a big brush and paint over the layer (see the screenshot). Use your imagination to choose colors (shades of gray, cool or warm brown etc.).

Set the layer opacity to 5-15%.

Use of this layer is not compulsory of course, but I think that it will make the image more natural.

• b/w images with high contrast
• glow effect
• it is pouring!
• lots of “special effects”, mostly white in color
• Sin City logo

Some images include combination of color and b/w, some are pure b/w. in this tutorial I will work with “pure” b/w “Sin City” effect.

You may experiment with these settings to get the result you like most.

It is usually not a problem to create a nice background in Photoshop, but making attractive pencil outlines is sometimes fairly tricky.

So these are the things we should try to reproduce by using various Photoshop features to make our photo look like a sketch:

• white (usually) background with little ‘level of detail’
• shape outlines, hard pencil lines
• soft skin tones
• directional pencil strokes
• paper texture.