Adobe Create Magazine And The Scribble Artist Action Set

It’s Deb here for another Tech Tuesday offering. Like many of you, I’m suffering through my annual cold. I don’t feel up to doing the things I should be doing like pruning my roses or working on projects that are due. Often I use the time to catch up on some reading. I love my subscriptions to print magazines and journals, but I also subscribe to some interesting blogs, digital magazines, and email lists. When I’m under the weather, I tend to catch up on the digital articles I’ve put to the side. I thought I’d share a few interesting articles or aggregators I’ve read. I hope that you’ll share some of your favorites with me. . . for the next time I catch a cold.

SCRIBBLE ARTIST ACTION SET

Adobe Create Magazine is chock-full of articles, tips, and sometimes some really cool free stuff. In one of the recent articles there was a free action (think: macro or automated commands) for turning photos into scribbled illustrations.  I use actions for things like resizing photos or turning the blues in an image a little more cyan.

For those of you who have created gesture or scribble drawings the old fashioned way, this was amazing. Push a button and hundreds, if not thousands, of steps will turn a photo into a sketch. For those who have never done a drawing like this, they are supposed to be quick drawings. I’m sure some of my drawings took less time than this automated sketch did. On my computer it took 4-10 minutes for each “sketch.”  Can you tell the difference between the “hand drawn” and the “action” drawing?

 

IT’S CUSTOMIZABLE

Just because it is automated, doesn’t mean you don’t have input. You have to tell the program which parts of the image you want to sketch by creating a mask. Click on the image below to open a short video I made to illustrate the mask.

 

Some images will work better than others. Resolution matters and so does the lighting of the subject. I modified the contrast in the image, and the resulting scribble image had more definition. It still needs more work, but you get the idea.

 

 

The type of brush you use to create the mask also makes a difference. In the image below I used a blurry (feathered) brush to create the mask. I also didn’t mask all of my hair. The edges of this scribble image were less defined.

 

 

The result of this action is a file with oodles of layers. This means you can customize the scribble. By default, the action draws with “blue ink,” but you can change that. You can also take the sketch, add filters to it, and put it on a different background.

 

 

What it should not be used for is filling the requisite sketch book for your drawing class. Earn your grade the old-fashioned way. By the way, in the image above with the two drawings, the guy in sunglasses is the automated sketch. I created the guy in the baseball cap in 2000. My gestural masterpiece is this one (also from the year 2000):

 

 

Please note: while some of the tips and ideas from Create Magazine work well with Photoshop Elements, this one does not. It did work just fine on Photoshop CS 6. The set comes with numerous files and complete instructions. The designer, Nuwan Panditha, has created other actions. Click here to see them.

Have you found anything cool you’d like to share with us?