Converting Photos to Line Art

Outside my regular job I freelance as a technical writer (mainly operating and maintenance manuals for various types of equipment). Right now, to get the illustrations I need, I take digital photographs and send them to an illustrator who somehow turns them into line art. Does anybody know how this is done, and what software/hardware may be required to do it? I think the illustrator uses some sort of touch pad and an electronic pen, but I have no clue what software he's using.

 

I will verify this, by trying it shortly just to prove to myself that it is right, but i believe photoshop, has a "line art" enhancement, to convert photos to line art....might be wrong, but i will try it.

 

it should. a lot of other lower end photo programs do it as well.

 

he/she probably uses one of the popular graphic programs available. ex: Adobe Photoshop

They have plug-ins called filters which they can apply to the picture. The filter for line art would theoretically determine the border surfaces of the brush/pencil strokes in the image and remove the "stuff" in the middle leaving only the border (line)..

 

Yes, I know about those. I have played around with them in PhotoPlus. Mostly they don't seem to work very well and I'm sure the guy is doing it some other way.

 

well, photoshop isn't just your every day editor.. it's a top of the line graphics software. I've seen some not so good filters and some unbelievable filters that both did the same thing..

he/she could also be tracing the images using his/her digipad.