How to use
- Choose a photo.
- Pick Pencil sketch, Colour pencil or Line art and adjust Line thickness and Darkness. Press Hold to see original to compare.
- Download PNG or JPG.
Options explained
- How it works
- The pencil sketch uses greyscale, invert, Gaussian blur and a colour-dodge blend (the classic Photoshop technique); line art uses Sobel edge detection. Filters only, no AI model.
- Output size
- The original size, reduced to 4000 pixels on the long side if larger.
What the two sliders change
Line thickness (1–30, starts at 8) is a blur radius in pixels. Darkness (0–100, starts at 30) means something slightly different in each style.
| Style | Line thickness | Darkness |
|---|---|---|
| Pencil sketch | Blur radius applied to the inverted greyscale image | Applies a gamma of 1 + 2 × Darkness ÷ 100 to the result: 1 (no change) at 0, 1.6 at the starting value, 3 at 100 |
| Colour pencil | Same as Pencil sketch | Same as Pencil sketch, then the shading is multiplied by the photo’s own colours, mixed 60% original and 40% white |
| Line art | One third of the value, at least 1 pixel, as the blur applied before edge detection | Sets the edge cut-off to 0.03 + 0.35 × (1 − Darkness ÷ 100) of the strongest edge, so a higher value draws weaker edges too |
The pencil effect is a colour dodge, base ÷ (255 − blurred), where base is the greyscale photo with a 1-pixel blur and blurred is the inverted copy blurred by the radius above. A bigger radius spreads the blur further, which gives thicker lines and more shading. In Line art, the Sobel filter measures how fast brightness changes between neighbouring pixels, and only places where it changes sharply become lines.
Frequently asked questions
Is it the same as AI drawing?
No. It is a filter that keeps your photo's composition and detail instead of redrawing it, which makes it fast and keeps your photo private.
Which photos work best?
A clear subject, even light and a simple background. Dark or busy photos produce many more lines.
Is my photo uploaded?
No. Everything happens in your browser.
Privacy
This tool runs entirely in your browser. Your files and text are processed on your device and are never uploaded to our servers.