Turn a photo into a line drawing
Convert any photo into a clean outline, coloring page, pencil sketch or value study in your browser. Lines stay exactly where they are in the photo, so you can add a drawing grid and transfer it to paper.
Drop a photo here to turn it into a line drawing
JPG, PNG or WebP · paste works too · stays on your device
or try a sample
How it works
How to turn a photo into a line drawing
Three steps, no account and no AI: the lines come from the edges in your photo, found by deterministic image processing on your own device.
- 1
Add your photo
Upload a JPG, PNG or WebP, drop it on the page, paste it, or pick it from your phone's camera roll. The first result appears straight away: the outline and a value study side by side, so you see the lines and the big light-and-dark shapes at once. The photo never leaves your device.
- 2
Choose the result and tune it
Outline for a line drawing or coloring page, Sketch for a pencil look, Values for a notan or posterized study, Stencil for a silhouette. For the outline, start from a preset — Portrait, Pet fur or Line art for kids — then move Detail to keep more or fewer lines, Smoothing to kill texture, and Line weight for thicker lines.
- 3
Download, or add a grid
Save a full-size PNG or JPG, or the lines alone as a transparent PNG. Press “Open in the grid maker” to put square cells over the drawing sized for your paper, or “Make a worksheet” for a two-page PDF with a matching blank grid.
Four results
Outline, coloring page, sketch or values: pick what you need
All four come from the same photo at the same pixel size, so you can lay one over another — or a grid over any of them — and everything lines up.
Outline — line drawing and coloring page
An outline maker in the literal sense: the tool converts your image to line art by finding every edge and drawing it as a black line on white, one pixel wide, then thickening it to the line weight you choose. Keep Detail high for a faithful image-to-outline conversion you can trace, or low with bold lines to turn the photo into a coloring page. Invert gives white lines on black for a chalk look.
Sketch — pencil sketch
The classic photo-to-sketch recipe — invert, blur, colour-dodge — gives a pencil sketch that keeps the photo's shading and proportions. Strength sets how dark the shading gets; Grain adds paper texture. Nothing is moved or redrawn, so it works as a tonal reference next to the outline.
Values — notan and value study
Posterize the photo to 2, 3 or 5 flat tones. Two tones is a notan: the clearest way to see the light-and-dark design of a picture before you draw. Three or five tones make a value study for planning shading. Threshold shifts where light becomes dark; Smoothing merges speckle into clean shapes.
Stencil — silhouette
A stencil maker for spray, screen and craft cutting: dark areas become one solid colour. Threshold chooses what counts as dark, Simplify rounds off detail so the shape is cuttable, Invert swaps the cut. It is a raster preview you print or trace — not a vector file, and it does not place bridges for you.
+ Grid
Add a grid to the line drawing
The outline is the upstream of the grid method: see the shapes first, then grid them and copy square by square.
Open in the grid maker carries the result over as the picture to grid — it is passed inside your browser, never uploaded. The grid maker keeps the cells square, works out the cell size for your paper or canvas in centimetres or inches, exports a matching blank grid and prints at actual size across sheets. Because the lines sit exactly where the photo's edges are, you can grid the outline and the original photo with the same settings and switch between them while you draw.
Make a worksheet sends the outline to the worksheet maker for a two-page PDF: the gridded line drawing and a blank grid with the same cells and labels, plus a name and date line — a grid drawing exercise or a coloring page with a grid, ready to print for a class on A4 or US Letter.
Who uses it
Artists, teachers, stencil makers and kids
Artists transferring a reference
Seeing the outline and the big values before you draw is the first step of the grid method. Convert the photo, hand the outline to the grid maker, and copy the lines square by square without the colour getting in the way.
Open the grid maker for drawingTeachers making coloring pages and worksheets
Turn a class photo, a plant from the school garden or a museum picture into a coloring page in a minute, or send the outline to the worksheet maker for a two-page grid drawing exercise with a matching blank grid. Student photos stay on the classroom machine.
Make grid drawing worksheetsTattoo and stencil prep
A clean outline of a reference photo at full resolution, or a one-colour silhouette for a cut stencil, without the photo leaving your device. Use Smoothing and Clean up to keep only the lines you would draw yourself.
Kids
Children love colouring their own pet, their family or their toy. The “Line art for kids” preset keeps the drawing simple and the lines bold enough for crayons, and the printable result is the same size as the photo.
FAQ
Questions about turning a photo into a line drawing
- Is this AI?
- No. The conversion is ordinary, deterministic image processing: the tool looks for places where brightness changes in your photo and draws a line there. Nothing is generated or guessed, so proportions, poses and every edge stay exactly where they are in the photo — which is what you need if you are going to grid the result and copy it to paper.
- How do I make a coloring page from a photo for free?
- Upload the photo, keep Outline selected and choose the “Line art for kids” preset: it keeps only the main shapes and draws them with bold lines. Lower Detail for fewer lines, raise Line weight for a thicker marker look, then download the PNG and print it. There is no account, watermark or limit. Make it a worksheet with a matching grid
- Can I print it at A4 or Letter?
- Yes. The PNG prints from any image viewer; set the printer to fit the page. For a gridded version at an exact size, use “Open in the grid maker”: it lays a square grid over the drawing, works out the cell size for your paper and exports a PDF for A4 or US Letter, fit to page or at actual size across several sheets. Open the grid maker
- How do I get only the outline as a transparent PNG?
- With Outline or Stencil selected, choose Transparent PNG. You get the black lines (or white lines, with Invert on) on a transparent background at the full pixel size of the photo, so it drops in as a layer over the original in Procreate, Photoshop, Krita or Clip Studio with no scaling.
- Does my photo get uploaded?
- No. The photo is decoded, converted and encoded entirely inside your browser; the heavy work runs in a background thread on your device. Nothing is sent to a server, which matters for client photos, tattoo references and pictures of children.
- How do I turn a photo into a stencil?
- Switch to Stencil. Threshold decides how dark a part of the photo has to be to become stencil, Simplify rounds off small details so the shape can be cut, Clean up drops islands and holes, and Invert cuts the light areas instead. The result is a raster preview — a PNG — not a vector cutting file, and it does not add bridges, so check that no islands float free before you cut.
- Why are there too many lines?
- Fur, grass, fabric and image grain are all edges to an edge detector. Raise Smoothing first: it blurs texture away before the lines are found, while real outlines survive. Then lower Detail and raise Clean up to drop short marks. The “Pet fur” preset does all three.