Photo today. Sketch tonight.
Drop a photo, get a pencil drawing. Seven looks — graphite, soft graphite, line only, sepia, charcoal, ink line, colour tint. Three dials: detail, shading, contrast. Hold to compare against the original. Nothing uploads. For brushwork, grab a proper app.
Turn a photo into a pencil sketch
Convert a photo into a drawing — graphite, charcoal, ink line, sepia or a coloured sketch — with the line detail and the shading under your control.
What you can change
- Pencil
- Soft graphite
- Line only
- Sepia
- Charcoal
- Ink line
- Colour
- Detail
- Shading
- Contrast
How it works
- 01Drop in a photo, or open one of the samples.
- 02Pick a drawing look, then set detail for how fine the lines run, shading for how much graphite fills the dark areas, and contrast.
- 03Download it at full resolution. Nothing is uploaded — the work happens in this browser tab.
Sharpening the pencil…
Turn a photo into a pencil sketch
Convert a photo into a drawing — graphite, charcoal, ink line, sepia or a coloured sketch — with the line detail and the shading under your control.
What you can change
- Pencil
- Soft graphite
- Line only
- Sepia
- Charcoal
- Ink line
- Colour
- Detail
- Shading
- Contrast
How it works
- 01Drop in a photo, or open one of the samples.
- 02Pick a drawing look, then set detail for how fine the lines run, shading for how much graphite fills the dark areas, and contrast.
- 03Download it at full resolution. Nothing is uploaded — the work happens in this browser tab.
Sharpening the pencil…
Six places drawing beats photographing
- 01 for portraits
A pencil-drawn portrait for a thank-you card
Run a portrait of someone through Pencil mode at default settings — you've got an A4-sized piece that looks hand-drawn. Print on cardstock, write a note next to it, mail. Better than a generic Hallmark card; takes 30 seconds longer.
- 02 for kids
A coloring page from a real photo
Ink Line mode produces high-contrast outlines — good source for a homemade coloring page. Drop a photo of the family pet, switch to Ink Line, print the result, hand it to the kid with crayons. Hours of contained chaos.
- 03 for journals
A sepia sketch beside a real photo
Journal spreads benefit from contrast: a glossy photo on one page, a soft sepia sketch of the same scene on the facing page. Same content, different texture — the spread reads as 'considered' instead of 'documented'.
- 04 for designers
A reference sketch for a client mood board
Mood boards mix textures: photos, type, illustrations. A pencil-sketched version of a hero photo sits between 'real' and 'concept' — useful when you don't have a final image yet. Drop, sketch, paste into the board.
- 05 for wedding
A sketched portrait for a save-the-date
Engaged-couple photos make weak save-the-dates because they look like every other engagement shoot. Run through Charcoal mode and the photo becomes an illustration — same couple, different feel. Instantly more interesting in a stack of mail.
- 06 for prints
A sketch print to frame on a wall
Photo prints feel impermanent on a wall. Sketch prints feel like art. Pick a photo from a hike or a pet or a kid, run Color or Soft Graphite mode, print A4 on matte paper, frame in a thin black frame. Reads as 'we commissioned this' even though you didn't.
Frequently asked
Does the photo upload anywhere? +
No. The sketch is rendered to a canvas in your browser. Your photo never touches our servers — we don't run an image pipeline at all.
How does the pencil sketch work? +
Two engines. Pencil, soft graphite, sepia and colour greyscale the photo, blur an inverted copy, and colour-dodge one with the other — that turns edge transitions into pencil marks. On its own that trick blanks out any large flat area, dark ones included, so a tone layer derived from the photo's luminance is multiplied back in; that is the Shading dial. Charcoal and ink line run a difference-of-Gaussians instead: two Gaussian blurs an octave apart, sharpened and thresholded, which holds onto tonal mass that a dodge cannot.
Why is the sketch too dark or too light? +
Shading first: at 0 you get lines on blank paper, at 100 the dark areas fill in with graphite. Then contrast — 60-90% for a soft faded pencil, 150%+ for crisp graphite. Detail also affects density, and high detail with high contrast can over-blacken.
What's the difference between the looks? +
Pencil is straight B&W graphite. Soft graphite widens the blur for broader shading. Line only drops the shading to zero — marks on blank paper, the tightest look. Sepia adds a warm paper tint. Charcoal is the difference-of-Gaussians engine with a soft threshold, for heavy soft-edged black. Ink line is the same engine thresholded hard: pure black and white, good for colouring pages and screen-print transfers. Colour preserves the photo's hues, multiplied with the sketch luminance.
Will it work on a portrait or a landscape? +
Both. Portraits emphasize edges (eyes, lips, hair) and look closer to a 'pencil portrait'. Landscapes emphasize textures (foliage, stone, water) and read more like illustration. Photos with strong tonal contrast sketch well; flat photos can come out muddy — try Charcoal or Ink Line modes for those.
How big can I export? +
Same dimensions as your source photo. The algorithm runs full-resolution on export, so a 4000×3000 photo exports at 4000×3000. JPG at 92% quality.
now what?
A few ways to display a sketch
next →
Photo Mat & Border
Print the sketch inside a paper mat for the wall.
Open
next →
Drop Shadow
Float the sketch over paper for a portfolio mockup.
Open
next →
Add Text to Photo
Sign it with a handwritten signature.
Open
next →
Polaroid Maker
Wrap the sketch in a paper Polaroid frame.
Open
next →
Shape Crop
Crop the sketch to a circle for a profile pic.
Open
next →
Diptych Maker
Show the sketch beside the photo it came from.
OpenThe rest of this shelf
Photo Filters
Eight looks plus the original — vintage to cinematic.
Open
Film Grain
Tri-X, Kodak Gold, Lomo — pick a roll, see the grain.
Open
Halftone Effect
Comic dots, risograph red, punk-zine textures.
Open
Duotone Effect
Map photo to two colors — Spotify, sunset, riso.
Open
Tilt-Shift Effect
Make real cities look like tabletop dioramas.
Open
Light Leak
Sunset, lomo red, golden hour — bleed light into corners.
Open Make proper illustrations
in a proper app.
One sketch from one photo is a piece. When you want layered illustration — pencil over watercolor, hand-tuned brush detail, color separations for print — a real drawing app handles it cleanly.