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This Pen and Ink action is available in my Actions download. The action works best on full-sized images. Use the following workflow:
Principle layers, and their effect on the final image, are shown below.
Color/Color Contrast. The Color layer introduces color to the image. Adjust opacity on the Color layer, and the Color Contrast layer, to adjust color. For a black and white image, disable the Color layers.
Pen/Pen Levels. The black and white Pen layer defines outlines in the image. Adjust opacity of the Pen Contrast layer to control Pen density.
The action makes two stops: one to adjust sharpness, and another to adjust the blur effect. Over-sharpen to bring out edge effects for a stronger Pen layer. Adjust blur to determine the amount of detail in the image. More blur means more detail. This may seem backwards, but try it! For an explanation see Construction.
For a pure black and white image, disable the two Color layers, and adjust Pen Levels. Default settings are shown below.
The center input slider, or Gamma slider, is set to 0.75 to darken the image. The output white point slider is set to 225 to prevent blown color highlights. For a pure black and white drawing, increase the white output slider and adjust gamma accordingly.
For the child painter image above, first replace the background with solid white. Corel's Knockout simplifies this task. Then run the Pen & Ink action. The background turns off-gray since the Levels white point is at 225. For a final touch do a vignette to white using the technique for irregular vignettes.
The following is a snapshot of the Layers palette just before the layers are merged to form the Pen layer.
The Photo layer is an over-sharpened copy of the image to emphasize outline and detail. The Color Dodge layer consists of an inverted image that has been blurred and blended using a Color Dodge blend. Finally, the Saturation layer is a Hue/Saturation adjustment with Saturation set to zero for a black and white result. These three layers are linked and merged to produce the Pen layer. There's a disabled Stop in the action at this point. If you wish to experiment, just disable the Merge Layers command near the end of the action.
The action pauses so you can enter parameters for sharpening the Photo layer and blurring the Color Dodge layer. The first time just try the defaults. Sharpening should be somewhat excessive to bring out edges. The Color Dodge layer starts with a copy of the Photo layer. This is inverted and blended with a Color Dodge blend.
If we stopped there the result would be a pure white layer. Effectively we would be canceling the colors in the Photo layer with the inverted Color Dodge layer. Adding a Gaussian Blur to the Color Dodge layer makes details fuzzy and allows them to seep through. The result is a high-contrast color rendition of the Photo layer. This also makes setting the blur radius counter-intuitive. For more detail in the image, you need to increase the blur effect!
The technique for making the Pen layer was originated by Scott Munroe for Paintshop Pro and later adapted to Photoshop by Ann Roberts. This technique, with the additional Color layer, forms the basis for Sheri's Sketch action at Actions Central.
