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Simulate an Etch-a-Sketch drawing in Photoshop
Etch-a-Sketches are fun, but who has the patience to learn how to make something that looks halfway decent? (Except George Vlosich, who is scary good at it).
For the rest of us, Photoshop can do the work for us and give us some nice results. With a little bit of tweaking and experimenting on your end, you can get a very realistic effect. First, let's start off with the blank Etch-a-Sketch:
I took this photo myself, but you can use it if you want. You could also buy and scan one if you didn't have a digital camera.
Step 1: Open up the image that you want to add into the Etch-a-Sketch. This time we're going to use a nice photo of a mother and her two kids.
With the image open, go to IMAGE > MODE > GRAYSCALE to remove all the color from the photo.
Step 2: After the image has been grayscaled, apply the "Photocopy" filter by clicking FILTER > SKETCH > PHOTOCOPY. I selected a detail of "1" and a darkness of about "40", but you pick whatever looks best to you. You can stop here, or you can play with other filters. Try using "Conte Crayon", with a foreground level of "14" and a background level of "7".Your image should look something like this:
Step 3: Now, open your blank Etch-a-Sketch image. Using either the magnetic lasso or magic wand selection tools, select the inside of the Etch-a-Sketch (the gray part). Make sure that your selection gets right up next to the red without including it. Now, go to SELECT > FEATHER and enter a value of 1-5 pixels, depending on the resolution. (In our case, 1 pixel is enough). This will make the image you paste into the Etch-a-Sketch look more realistic.
Step 4: Switch back to the photo that we'll be pasting (the family) and hit CTRL+A to select the whole canvas, then CTRL+C to copy the image. Switch back to the Etch-a-Sketch that has the feathered selection in place.
Step 5: With the Etch-a-Sketch image up, hit CTRL+SHIFT+V (or EDIT > PASTE INTO) to paste the sketched image into the selection on your Etch-a-Sketch. Now, when you move the image around, it will appear "underneath" the edge of the Etch-a-Sketch, via a Photoshop layer mask. Pretty slick.
Step 6: Finally, with the sketched image in place and its layer selected in the "Layers" panel, change its blend mode to "Multiply" (this option is available right at the top of the "Layers" panel). Adjust the opacity if you want and you should come up with something like this:
That's it! Feel free to mess with the filters, blend modes, etc. to come up with something even better. Another way to do it is to simply start with the blank Etch-a-Sketch, select the pencil tool with a charcoal gray color, and draw with the mouse. Just make sure you don't lift your hand! We did something similar in this Kathy Ryg direct mail piece.
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