I want to take a color photo and turn it into a line drawing. Is their a program that does this better than others or is nothing better than the pencil ?
It depends on what you are trying to accomplish. Will your computerized line drawing be a final product, or just a simplified image for transferring purposes?
If you use Photo shop, Or even Illustrator to make a "line drawing" from an image you will still end up with a lot of unwanted information in your transfer. When the image is reduced for print the extra info will all run together and you'll be left with something that will likely not work for your purposes. Imagine drawing on an inflated balloon with a marker, and then letting the air out. It'd be a blobby mess. My advice is to use tracing paper on top of your image and just get the lines you really need. Then scan that tracing into a photo manipulating program of your choice. If you have the ability you could always do your tracing "in" the computer. there are lots of youtube videos that go into that territory. I hope that helps.
I agree with wowilson. Tracing by hand usually is faster and less complicated. In a perfect world it would be nice to have a graphics program give you a "one click" conversion but usually it interprets it into a mess. I use a LED tattoo tracing pad which is similar to a light table and it allows easier tracing. I find Vellum is a better medium as it hold us to erasing better. Make the lines plenty dark and then scan and manipulate as needed.
I've been using Illustrator for years and have never found a quick and easy one-click way to turn a photo into a line drawing.
Hand tracing is good advice.
I'm fairly adept with Illustrator's pen tool and can trace a drawing with it quicker than doing it on paper first. The pen tool has a learning curve, but will reward you if you learn to use it.
dale : i use corel. never tried illustrator. sam is right. you spend quite a bit of time working from fotos. for me, when doing this, i concentrate on the outline as well as a few key elements in the design, send to print, then add pencil work till i'm satisfied.
i usually do this with logos and other work that must be exact as possible.