Shoeshine Scenario: Marker Technique

These drawings were created to illustrate a scenario-sketching technique described on the Design for Service weblog. View the full set of marker scenarios images.

Step 1: This is the original photo. Image selection is important. The best images tend to be bold with simple backgrounds and few extraneous details. Stock photos work best, but you can also search for Creative Commons licensed photos on Flickr or shoot custom photos for particular scenes.

Each image in your scenario should be resized to the same dimensions and resolution. These directions are based on a 150dpi image file.

Step 2: Start by simplifying the image with the Median noise filter in Photoshop. We're looking for only the most important shapes for the sketch and this filter gets rid of unimportant details by averaging each pixel against its neighbors. A setting of 3 pixels is usually enough but complex images might need more.

Step 3: Now convert the photo into a basic line drawing with the Find Edges stylize filter. This filter automatically traces the boundary between light and dark values and between adjacent colors. There aren't any settings for this filter.

Step 4: Convert the image to black and white using the Desaturate image adjustment or by setting the image to grayscale. It's important to do this after the Find Edges filter and not before, otherwise important color boundaries might be lost.

Step 5: The lines are a little too perfect, so the next step is to distort them so the final sketch looks hand-drawn. Use the Sprayed Strokes brush strokes filter with a stroke length of 20, a radius of 0 and a stroke direction of right diagonal.

Step 6: Run the sketch through the Dark Strokes brush stroke filter to complete the hand-drawn effect. Set the balance to 1, the black intensity to 0 and the white intensity to 10. It's important to use the same settings for each image in your scenario, otherwise the final effect won't match.

Step 7: You could stop right here if you wanted and still have a perfectly acceptable sketch but it's nice to go back and add some shadows. Save the line sketch you just made and then start with a new version of the original photo. We'll come back to the line sketch at the end.

Step 8: To create the shadows, use the Stamp sketch filter in Photoshop. It simplifies the image into areas of light and dark. There are two sliders that vary the balance of black and white and the smoothness of the resulting stamp shape. The right settings vary depending on the nature of the photo. Start with just a little shadow.

The stamp filter uses the colors you have set for foreground and background on the tool palette.

Step 9: Use the Film Grain artistic filter to add some specks of light within the dark color, otherwise the shadows will be too uniform. Set the grain to 7, the highlight to 3 and the intensity all the way to 10. This setting should be the same for each image in your scenario.

Step 10: Run the shadow through the Dark Strokes brush stroke filter to complete the hand-drawn effect by slightly smearing the edges. Set the balance to 1, the black intensity to 0 and the white intensity between 6 and 10. For large areas of shadow, use a lower white intensity.

Step 11: Repeat steps 7-10 but with a new version of the original image and a higher dark/light balance for the Stamp filter. You want a shadow with more dark area than the previous shadow.

Step 12: Repeat steps 7-10 once again but with an even higher dark/light balance. This shadow should have quite a bit of dark area. You'll combine this with the previous two shadows in the next step.

Step 13: Blend the three shadows in the Photoshop Layers palette so that the fine shadow is on top and the broad shadow is on the bottom with the medium shadow in the middle. Set the opacity of the bottom layer to 15%. Set the opacity of the top two layers to 40% and the blending mode for those top layers to Multiply. This allows the colors to build and mix and creates the illusion of three marker colors.

Step 14: Finally, combine the line drawing with the shadows by setting the layer blending mode for the line layer to Multiply and stacking it above the shadow layers in the Layers palette. This adds detail to the blocks of shadow color and creates a finished sketch.

For a simplified drawing effect, try the original pencil sketch technique.