Best 7 Tools to Convert Photos into Sketches

Converting photos into sketches is fun. Why? Because you can turn ordinary pictures into mesmerizing drawings, giving them a unique style and appeal. You can create art pieces from everyday captures, including urban city shots, pet portraits, and selfies that make it seem like you've posed for a professional artist.

This article will focus on the picture-to-sketch converters. Keep reading and know the best way to convert pictures to sketches on PC, mobile, and online for free.

The Best Image to Sketch Converter for PC and Mac

As a powerful video editor with 100+ advanced editing features, Filmora Desktop (available for Windows and macOS) lets you apply sketch effects to turn an image into a drawing line and enjoy many other features for transforming pictures and videos.

It also allows you to animate a static image to a sketch video with its AI image-to-video feature. Moreover, many people also favor its AI image-to-image generator with 40+ filters, such as anime, cartoon, witch, clown, and more. If you prefer to generate images according to your prompts, its AI image can also support that.

Try It Free Try It Free

Download the APP

secure download

How to Turn Images into Sketches with Filmora?

The following are the steps to convert images to sketches in Filmora.

1. Launch the software, sign up (or log into your account), and tap New Project.

   

2. Select an image and tap Import > drag it to the timeline.
3. Swipe the options at the bottom and tap Effect > search sketch in the box.

   

4. Drag the effect above the timeline and then adjust the opacity if you need to.

   

5. If you are satisfied, click the snapshot or export button to save the results.

   

Turn Your Picture Into a Drawing for Free Online

Many online services let you turn photos into drawings for free. They provide excellent effects, from regular pencil drawings to color sketches. Although, they have limited capabilities, such as fewer styles, templates, and editing tools, and typically put a watermark on your pictures.

BeFunky Photo to Sketch

This image-to-sketch converter has AI-powered features for turning pictures into drawings. It offers many collections with fantastic sketch effects in the Artsy category, including Sketcher, Colored Pencil, Pen Art, Inkify, Graphic Novel, Crayon, etc.

Each effect lets you customize multiple settings, including amount, smoothness, variation, and brush size. If you get a subscription, you can choose the area to apply sketch effects (the background, foreground, or entire image).

However, sketches and other AI effects across categories aren't free. You can use them without paying or creating an account, but saving your pictures requires a subscription. Only standard editing tools like cropping, resizing, color adjustment, and some touch-ups are free of charge.

insMind Photo to Sketch

Like BeFunky, this image-to-pencil art converter is ideal for portraits, product photography, landscape pictures, you name it. It can turn them into 2D or 3D pencil drawings and apply watercolor, cartoon, anime, or CG filters to make them more artistic.

The best part? The sketch effects look realistic. The AI Sketch and Line Drawing filters can make the sketches pass for genuine pencil line drawings. The only notable downside for free users is the watermark. Still, insMind lets you download your pictures without subscribing, although you must create an account to use it.

The Best Apps for Converting Photos Into Line Drawings

Converting photos into line drawings online is perfect if you don't want to download apps. However, a dedicated app on your phone offers more convenience. It eliminates the need to search for an online tool via a web browser whenever you wish to turn a picture into a sketch. Also, many apps have an offline mode, making them ideal for uninterrupted editing.

The following apps are excellent for turning images into line drawings. The first two are available for Android, while the others are for iPhone devices. Here's what they offer.

Photo Sketch Maker

Photo Sketch Maker is a no-frills Android app for turning pictures into line drawings. It doesn't have many editing tools, but its options for converting photos into line art can make any image artistic. They include pencil, paint, cartoon, comic, print, chalk, and sketch styles (among others), and some also offer colored sketches with an intensity slider.

Regardless of the applied style, you can adjust the brightness, contrast, sharpness, and vignette. You can also make artistic effects by increasing pixelation, adding a swirl, and creating bulge distortion (which can be hilarious). The best part is you can use the app for free.

Pencil Sketch

Pencil Sketch is another Android app that lets you turn photos into sketches for free. The options include Draw, Pencil, Sketch, Paint, Doodle, and Comic. Each generates regular and colored drawings and lets you adjust the effect's intensity.

The app offers many more editing tools than Photo Sketch Maker, including filters, frames, and stickers. You can also draw over your pictures, crop and pixelate them, add text, and round the corners. Additionally, you can adjust the saturation, sharpness, color temperature, exposure, contrast, and vignette.

The only downside is that there are too many ads popping up after every few taps, but you can avoid them by using the app offline.

Sketch Me!

Sketch Me is a free iOS app that turns pictures into line drawings within seconds. You only need to choose a photo from your gallery and let the app convert it into a pencil sketch. It will instantly generate 10+ sketch effects, which you can browse by swiping left and right.

You can customize all effects, each with different settings. For instance, one lets you adjust the strength and blur radius, another has a threshold slider, and the rest have other customizable parameters.

One unique feature is the split-screen mode, which turns half of your picture into a sketch and leaves the other half intact. You can also paint over your sketches using any color.

Pencil Sketch Photo Editor +

Pencil Sketch Photo Editor Plus is another sought-after iPhone app that creates beautiful sketch effects. You can choose between pencil and ink styles to turn a picture into a drawing for free and adjust the intensity using a slider.

The app has no editing tools but stands out for live sketch effects. You can turn on your front camera within the app, get a preview of yourself as a line drawing, and take photos. You can also share them on social media. However, you'll see a massive watermark once you save a picture unless you get a subscription to remove it.

Bonus: Convert Pictures to Sketch Videos With AI

Filmora has many more aces up its sleeve. One includes an AI Image-to-Video generator. You can use it as a photo-to-sketch converter, where the sketch is a video telling an engaging story.

However, the tool doesn't limit you to drawings; you can type any prompt to bring your pictures to life. You can also use templates to make a video from two combined photos.

Try It Free Try It Free

Download the APP

secure download

Here's how to convert pictures to sketch videos with Filmora:

1. Launch the app and tap Image to Video.

   

2. Choose one or two images from your gallery and tap Import.
3. Type a prompt in the Description box to explain your vision and instruct the AI to create a sketch video (e.g., you can specify the style like a pencil drawing). Hit Generate and wait a few minutes.

   

4. Once your sketch video is ready, tap Edit to polish it (if necessary) or Save to send it to your gallery.

   

Conclusion

Converting pictures into sketches is a walk in the park with user-friendly apps like all the above. However, Filmora is your best bet for scroll-stopping photos and videos. Besides offering more editing features, its AI is more advanced and can make videos from any image, breathing life into them through templates or custom prompts.

Download it to your Android or iPhone for on-the-go editing, get a desktop version to your PC or Mac, and enter a world of possibilities for viral photos and videos.

Try It Free Try It Free

Download the APP

secure download