AOL Photo Talk: All Things Photographic: Photo Tips

We are starting a regular feature, Photo Tips, where you'll get to see some neat tricks and ideas that we hope will help you transform your images. Over the weeks (and months and years, we hope) we'll offer simple tutorials like the one below as well as advanced tutorials like the one we will be posting next week on color correction. So stay tuned!

The primary software program we use is Adobe's Photoshop, so most of the tips we'll offer will reference that software.

Photoshop Pet Sketch Tip:

Don't throw away those out of focus, badly exposed pet pictures! Here are a few Photoshop tips to turn them into snazzy sketches of your pet.

Let's start with something you may have experienced: a dark, fuzzy photo of your pet, for example, like the picture of this cat:

Step One: Create a duplicate layer.

In Photoshop, it's often best to work in layers as it keeps your original image intact.

To do this, go to "layers" in the top menu or the layers tab in the pop-up and choose "duplicate layer." Or use a short cut: On a PC, use "Ctrl J" or on a Mac, "Apple J"

Name the new layer, e.g. cat2.

Step 2: Adjust Levels

Make sure you work on the duplicate layer.

Go to the "Image" tab on the top and choose "Adjustments" in the drop down menu. Then select "Levels." A shortcut: on a PC use "Ctrl L" or on a Mac, use "Apple L"

Play with the controls until it looks the way you want it to. The more the contrast, the better will be the results. Here are the levels we used for our tones:

and the image now looks like this:

Step 3: Sharpening

Now add some sharpening.

Go to the Filter tab at the top.

Select "Unsharp Mask" (This also helps with the contrast.)

Here are the settings I used:

Step 4: Artistic Filter

Experiment with the Artistic Filter: You can create any number of creative effects -- below are details of the effects I created.

Make sure you are still in the the duplicate layer.

Go to the "Filter" tab on top.

Select " Artisitc"

Then from the drop down menu select " Colored Pencil" - it opens up the window below. You can see the settings we chose for the colored pencil effect: 3, 15, 38.

Play with the pencil width, stroke pressure and paper brightness until you achieve the effect desired.

And TA DA!

Note: When you have in the "Artistic Filter" dialog box , play with different filter and see the effects. In the image below we used the "plastic wrap" effect instead of the "colored pencil."