Photo to pencil sketch
Drop in a photo – the sketch appears instantly. Adjust stroke, darkness and style, then save. Your photo stays on your device; classic image filters do the work, not AI.
Source: W3C – Compositing and Blending Level 1: color-dodge B(Cb, Cs) = min(1, Cb / (1 − Cs)). Updated: .
How it is calculated
In short: This tool turns a photo into a pencil sketch with classic image filters: grayscale, a blurred negative and a “color dodge” blend turn flat areas white and leave edges as pencil strokes. There are four styles – pencil, charcoal, colored pencil and outlines for coloring. Everything runs in your browser, with no upload and no AI.
How it works
- Drag in a photo, choose one, or paste it with Ctrl + V.
- Pick a style. “Outline” gives you a coloring page; “Colored pencil” keeps the photo’s colors, softened.
- Fine-tune with stroke width and darkness; paper texture makes the result less smooth.
- Click “Save drawing” – PNG or JPG, up to 3,000 pixels on the long side.
How it is calculated
Each pixel’s brightness is computed with the ITU-R BT.709 weights. The grayscale image is blurred with three box-filter passes, which approximates a Gaussian blur (Kovesi 2010). Then comes the color-dodge blend (W3C Compositing and Blending): gray divided by its blurred version. Where nothing changes the result is white; at edges a dark stroke remains. The outline style uses the difference of two blurs (XDoG, Winnemöller 2012), charcoal a steeper tone curve.
Honest limits
This is a filter, not an artist: it doesn’t invent strokes or a style the way AI apps do, and it won’t replace a hand-drawn portrait. It works best with high-contrast photos and clear outlines; flat, noisy or very dark pictures produce gray blotches – lower the darkness or raise the stroke width. Large photos are scaled to 3,000 pixels for export.
Privacy
Your photo is processed only in your browser and is never uploaded. Only the style and slider settings are remembered.
More editing: the photo editor for filters, brightness and cropping.
Frequently asked questions
How do I turn a photo into a sketch online for free?
Drop the photo into the box above, keep the “Pencil” style and click “Save drawing”. No account, no watermark, and the photo is never uploaded.
Can I turn a photo into an outline or coloring page?
Yes – choose “Outline (for coloring)”. Keep darkness fairly low and stroke width medium for clean lines; photos with a simple background work best.
Is this an AI photo-to-sketch tool?
No. It uses fixed image filters (blur and color dodge). The same photo with the same settings always gives the same drawing.
How do I do this in Photoshop?
Duplicate the layer, desaturate it, invert the copy, apply a Gaussian blur and set the layer to Color Dodge. This page does exactly those steps automatically.
Why is my sketch too light or blotchy?
Too light: raise the darkness or choose charcoal. Blotchy: raise the stroke width and turn off paper texture. Very dark or blurry photos always give weaker drawings.
Sources and legal basis
- W3C – Compositing and Blending Level 1: color-dodge B(Cb, Cs) = min(1, Cb / (1 − Cs))
- Kovesi (2010) – Fast Almost-Gaussian Filtering (wiederholte Mittelwertfilter ≈ Gaussfilter)
- Winnemöller, Kyprianidis, Olsen (2012) – XDoG: An eXtended difference-of-Gaussians compendium, Computers & Graphics 36(6)
- ITU-R BT.709 – Luminanz Y = 0,2126 R + 0,7152 G + 0,0722 B
- WHATWG HTML – Canvas: getImageData / putImageData
- W3C – Web Share API
- ITU-T T.81 / ISO/IEC 10918-1 – JPEG
- W3C – Portable Network Graphics (PNG) Specification
- Google for Developers – An image format for the Web (WebP)
- AOMedia – AV1 Image File Format (AVIF)
- MDN – Image file type and format guide
- MDN – HTMLCanvasElement.toBlob()
As of: · Editorial policy
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