How to Trace a Photo Onto Paper Using Your Phone

Tracing a photo has one problem: a photo is not made of lines. It is made of tones. Before you can trace it you have to turn it into line art — and that is a step most people skip, which is why their traces look muddy.

Step 1 — turn the photo into line art

Line2Art has a built-in converter. Load a picture from your gallery or take a new one, and it produces a clean drawing you can actually follow. Two styles are available:

• Line Art — flat outlines only. Best for tracing, best for beginners.
• Pencil — keeps some shading. Better when you want a moody portrait than when you want clean lines to copy.

There is an intensity slider. Turn it down if the result looks noisy, up if the face or object is disappearing. Photos with strong light and a plain background convert far better than busy ones.

Step 2 — put it on the paper

Prop the phone above your sheet, open the camera overlay, and the converted lines appear on the page in the viewfinder. Scale and rotate until the drawing fills the area you want, then lock it so a bumped phone does not move your guide halfway through.

Step 3 — copy, do not chase

Draw the big shapes first — the outline of the head, the line of the shoulders, the horizon. Only then go for the small stuff. If you start with an eyelash you will spend an hour on a face that is the wrong shape.

Why not just print it?

You can, and if you have a printer that is a perfectly good method. The phone wins when you do not have a printer, when you want to resize the picture without reprinting, when you want to flip it to check your proportions, or when you want to fade the guide out as you gain confidence.

Common problems

• The lines jump around. The phone is not stable. Use a stand.
• Too many lines. Lower the converter intensity, or switch to Line Art style.
• You cannot see your pencil. Lower the overlay opacity so your own marks read against the guide.
• Glare on the paper. Move the light source to the side, not above.

Keep reading