software to sketch over photos?

[jmdeegan]

maybe its photoshop...which if it is and you know of a tutorial...please share

basically, i have ideas for my house/landscaping and i would love to take existing pictures and sketch the ideas on to the pictures---retaining walls, decorative stuff, etc, but i dont know wht would be best for this function....

free or cheap preferred, unless CS3 or LR can do it....

thanks

[D4rknezz]

Hiii

I am not sure what you have in mind, but you can definitely use CS3 to sketch over photos.
Working on no assumption at all :

- You can use the text tool (shortcut key 'T') to type words over your photo.
- You can use the brush tool (shortcut key 'B') to draw
- You can use the basic shapes tool (shortcut key 'U' to draw shapes such as lines and rectangles)

- If you want to keep the photo untouched, i recommend reading up on Photoshop layers. There must be tons of tutorials there.
- Remember that whenever you select a tool, its context menu will be displayed horizontally on the top bar. For example, if you select the brushes, the types of brush, its behaviour, opacity, etc will be displayed at the top bar.

- if the sketches are not turning out like you want them to be, play around with brush and brush sizes. There are hundreds of brushes, and you can customize every aspect of the brush such as the density of the ink, the flow of the ink, the shape of the brush, etc.

I hope that starts you in the right direction! cheers

[D4rknezz]

In addition, if you find out that sketching is not for you, you can always photoshop a picture of what you had in mind, into your photo.
For example, you can always cut and paste a picture of a lamp post into your lawn. Obviously, how well it looks depends on how neat you do it.

[FHPhotographer]

Originally Posted by jmdeegan

maybe its photoshop...which if it is and you know of a tutorial...please share

basically, i have ideas for my house/landscaping and i would love to take existing pictures and sketch the ideas on to the pictures---retaining walls, decorative stuff, etc, but i dont know wht would be best for this function....

free or cheap preferred, unless CS3 or LR can do it....

thanks

EDIT: I think I misread your question; the stuff below is for rendering from the image, not into the image. Here's an open source program I found http://www.pencil-animation.org/ Or you can just create a blank layer and sketching on that layer over the background image layer. Hard to do with a mouse, however, you really need pen tablet.
This is the technique I picked up from Susan Bloom's excellent book "Digital Painting in Photography." It looks complicated but it's fast and easy. Note: this only works on 8-bit files.

Copy the layer, then
Filter >Stylize>Glowing Edges > Adjust Edge Width and Brightness >Ok
Then use, Image>Adjustments>Invert
And then, Image>Adjustments>Desaturate> Brightness/Contrast to get the lines the way you want them.
It seems to work better than the "Sketch" of "Trace Contour" filters . Good luck,
Brian

[junyo]

Have you considered Sketchup?.