Photo to Sketch

Photo to Sketch redraws a picture as if it had been made by hand. Pick one of five styles: a soft graphite pencil sketch, smudgy charcoal, crisp black ink lines, a colour pencil drawing or a flat, bold cartoon. Each one has three sliders that matter for that style, such as stroke width and darkness for pencil, or line thickness, detail and solid shadows for ink, so you can push it from a light study to a heavy, dramatic drawing.

The result appears live as you move a slider, and a before/after line lets you drag between your photo and the drawing to compare them. An optional paper texture, made by the tool itself rather than loaded from an image, adds the faint blotches and grain of real drawing paper, and pencil strokes break up slightly on that grain, just as graphite does.

It is handy for gifts, profile pictures, colouring pages, tattoo and craft outlines, or simply a fun take on a holiday snap. Everything is worked out on your own device: the photo is never uploaded, there is no sign-up, no watermark, and the download is full size (up to 4,096 pixels on the long side), not a small preview.

1. Press Choose a photo, drop one onto the box, or paste a picture you have copied.
2. Tap a Style tile: Pencil, Charcoal, Ink lines, Colour pencil or Cartoon. Each tile shows a small preview of your own photo in that style.
3. Move the three Adjust sliders until it looks right, and drag the line across the picture to compare it with the original. Reset puts the sliders back.
4. Choose Plain, White paper or Cream paper, then PNG or JPG.
5. Press Download sketch. The full-size drawing is made and saved, and Keep going can carry it into another tool.

• Five styles: pencil, charcoal, ink line art, colour pencil and cartoon
• Three tuned sliders per style, remembered separately when you switch
• Live preview with a draggable before/after line (mouse, touch or arrow keys)
• Style tiles that preview every look on your own photo
• Generated paper texture in white or cream, or plain with no texture
• Full-size download up to 4,096 px on the long side (about 12.6 megapixels), as PNG or JPG
• Opens JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC from iPhones, AVIF, TIFF, GIF, BMP and more
• Heavy work runs in a background worker, so the page stays responsive

• Pick JPG for sharing: with paper texture on, a full-size PNG can be ten times bigger for no visible gain.
• Photos with a clear subject and good light make the best sketches. A busy background turns into busy lines, so crop close first if you can.
• For a colouring page, use Ink lines with Solid shadows at 0 and Detail around 40, then save as PNG and print.
• If a pencil sketch looks washed out, raise Darkness before Stroke width: wider strokes add softness, darkness adds weight.
• Very dark photos give grey, grainy sketches because there is little detail in the shadows. Brighten the photo in the Photo Editor first.
• Cartoon works best on portraits and pets at a medium Smoothness. Push it high for a painted, poster-like look.