Quick Sketch

This Sketch effect was created in about 10 seconds with a photoshop action that incorporates a third-party plugin.

The majority of this effect is due to the tried and tested technique of desaturating the image, duplicating the layer, inverting the duplicate, changing the blending mode to linear dodge and then blurring. This process leaves us with an image that looks like a computer generated sketch effect (as you'd expect). What is needed next is some additional process that adds the illusion that a creative hand has been involved.

Alien Skin's Snap Art is one of those Photo-to-Art conversion plugins that purports to do all of the work for you. The Snap Art suite of effects will provide you with approximate conversions to oil, pastel, pencil and other media or styles with results that, while falling short of Leonardo or Michelangelo, will, with minimal input, provide you with a foundation from which you can build your finished image.

The Snap Art 'Pencil Sketch' filter was applied to the original version of the image and then multiplied over the already processed 'linear dodged' layer (with opacity set quite low).

The whole process is incorporated into a single action so that no work is involved in creating one of these sketch style images. I've have not, however, included a flatten layers command at the end of the action, so that if the results are not quite as desired, then the opacity level of the Snap Art layer can be adjusted accordingly.