Do you know of a good OUTLINE app out there for creating thick, clean and stylised outlines like the image below created in PicsArt? – which is almost perfect by the way. You can see the original photo directly below this PicsArt outline.


I’m obsessed with lines; quality of line and mark-making. For those of you have taken my online classes, you’ll know that I encourage a good scribble. It’s good for both getting to know your mark-making tools and it can be a real stress buster!

I’m currently looking for a really good app that creates simple outlines of photos. I don’t mean sketchy lines like the ones in the images below…..

…I mean really nice big thick confident simple outlines like the image below, again, created from a photo in PicsArt.

I got really excited the other day when I thought I’ll found the solution in PicsArt but although the line quality is excellent, it doesn’t always follow the complete photo, tending to focus on the head. Also, to benefit from the whole range of features it costs £49 for a year or £4.99 a month and that’s a stretch for most people’s app budget.
Has anyone discovered a good outline app? Below are a few I tried with app labels given in each example, but none really gave me the simple, confident outlines I was after.

Mobile photographer Elaine Taylor (aka @sunflowerof21) usually known for her extraordinarily bold and colourful images offered up the app BeCasso as a possible solution. Here’s her BeCasso image (left) and then some cleaning up in TouchRetouch (right). Not bad but the line is still a bit ropey. ….but thanks Elaine! I discovered a great new sketch app in BeCasso.

A long time ago, back in 2014 a wonderful app called Photoshop Touch made great line work of photos as seen in the images of the children trampolining below. You’ll see in the close up a beautiful, tactile quality of line similar to that produced from mono printing with sticky inks. Alas, Photoshop Touch is now retired and as far as I know Adobe haven’t created any similar feature since (but please let me know if you know different

Apart from PicsArt, the sketch apps mentioned in this article have given me the closest results, but not really the thick clean line I am after. I’ve tried lots of sketch apps and – basically – well, unsurprisingly, they’re all a bit sketchy.
I’d love to hear from you if you know an app that will create the clean, stylised outline like the PicsArt one. Fingers crossed….Please drop me a comment below.

= Nicki =
♥️📱🎨