Image editing
Photo to Pencil Sketch
Convert any picture into a hand-drawn pencil sketch directly in your browser, with live sliders for shading and line darkness.
Processed on your device — nothing is sent anywhere.
Works in your browser. No account needed.
Frequently asked questions
What do the two sliders control?
Shading sets the blur radius used to build the sketch. Low values (1–4) give a clean line drawing with mostly outlines; the default of 10 gives a balanced sketch; high values (15–25) bring back soft tonal shading like a graphite drawing. Line darkness multiplies the strokes: below 100% they turn faint and airy, above 100% they become bolder and higher in contrast, without changing where they appear.
What settings make a good coloring page?
Keep Shading low, around 2 to 4, so only outlines remain, and push Line darkness up to 150–200% so the lines are solid enough to color inside. Choose a photo with a simple subject and a plain background — a pet, a flower, a car — because busy backgrounds turn into dense scribbles. Download as PNG and print at the size you need.
How does the pencil sketch effect work?
It is the color-dodge technique used in photo editors: the photo is converted to grayscale, an inverted copy is blurred, and the blurred copy is dodge-blended over the grayscale. Where the two are nearly the same — flat areas like skin, sky or walls — the result goes to white; where they differ — edges and texture — dark strokes remain, which looks like pencil lines on paper.
Which photos convert best?
Photos with clear edges and good contrast: portraits in even light against a plain background, buildings, pets, product shots. Very dark or low-contrast photos produce faint sketches — raise Line darkness to compensate. Noisy low-light phone photos can come out grainy, because the effect treats noise as texture; a lower Shading value and a slightly lower Line darkness keep the grain down.
Is the downloaded sketch full resolution?
Yes. The live preview is computed on a copy no larger than 800 pixels on its long side so the sliders stay responsive. When you press Download, the effect is recomputed on the original pixels with the blur radius scaled up in proportion, so a 4000 × 3000 photo exports as a 4000 × 3000 sketch that looks like the preview, only sharper.
Can it make a colored pencil sketch?
No — the output is always black-and-white graphite style. Transparent areas in a PNG are treated as white paper. If you want a tinted look, download the sketch and apply a color overlay or a multiply layer in a photo editor.
About this tool
This tool turns a photograph into a pencil drawing: edges become graphite-like strokes and flat areas fade to paper white. Drop in a photo and the sketch appears immediately at the default settings; then tune two sliders — Shading for how much soft tone survives, Line darkness for how bold the lines are — and press and hold the preview at any time to flick back to the original. The download is rendered at the photo’s full resolution as a PNG or JPG.
Starting points that work: for a clean line drawing or coloring page, Shading 2–4 with darkness 150–200%. For a portrait sketch, Shading 8–12 with darkness around 100–130%, which keeps the eyes and hair defined while skin stays light. For a soft, realistic graphite study, Shading 18–25 with darkness 100%. For a light, airy sketch to print as a background, darkness 60–80%.
Choosing the format: PNG is lossless and keeps thin lines perfectly crisp, which is best for printing and for further editing. JPG makes a much smaller file, which is fine for sharing on social media or sending in a message; at the quality used here the difference is hard to see. Either way the output is a normal grayscale image that opens anywhere.
Common uses include custom gifts and cards from family photos, coloring pages for children made from their own pets or toys, tattoo and embroidery references, sketch-style avatars and profile pictures, and quick drawing references for artists who want to see where the main lines of a scene fall. The photo is processed on your own device; it is not uploaded anywhere.