Graphics Intarsia - patterns question

Does anyone know what intarsia is or is there anyone here who does it?

Intarsia is a form of wood inlaying that is similar to marquetry. Wooden pieces, cut from various types/colours of wood, sanded and polished to form amazing pictures.

I have a question regarding creating patterns for intarsia from photographs.
I have seen the steps used to go from a photo, to a line drawing of that photo, then a black/white greyscale photo with no more than about 5 or 6 shades.
A sample of the process is shown at http://www.kathywise.com/images/intarsiacustom.gif

Would it be incredibly hard to do something like this?
Would there be software, or scripts written which can deduce such line drawings from a picture?
Would a task like this be able to be performed with high percentage of software use.. or would a process like this need someone with outstanding natural drawing skills?

In other words, if I knew only how to use photoshop or gimp or such programs but could not draw well freehand, could I learn to do this.. or would I need to be able to draw most of this myself?

 

Just to clarify my intention with above post, I am not asking people to do this for me.
I merely want to know how difficult it would be for a novice such as me to learn how to do it.
Any advice at all would be appreciated.

 

I am not sure if it is the way you are supposed to do it, I've never heard of this Intarsia thing before, but I would've thought it was entirely possible to do it in photoshop.

Drawing the lines shouldn't be explicitly hard, but I would think adding the wooden texture + lighting and shadow, making it all look realistic etc. would probably take a little expertise. I'm not sure, but it sure does look interesting ^_^ I might give it a try and some point and see how difficult it is.

 

Now you have misunderstood me completely.

I wish to make the patterns.. from real photo's.
That dog gives a good step by step guide...

but I want the pattern .. in order to do the intarsia for real.
In other words, I will go buy real wood, different colors and different species, and create the artistic piece by cutting the pieces with a scrollsaw, creating a tight-fitting puzzle, then sanding them and creating a 3d visual effect of depth. This depth, in conjunction with the wood grain, creates the image you require.

I can do intarsia, by buying patterns from people that sell patterns, but eventually one gets kind of tired of these set patterns of intarsia and you want to create unique pieces.

 

Oh I see. Well, as I said, I have no idea was Intarsia is

Ehm, so you want to make the pattern (The third stage in the picture?) in photoshop using a photo, so you can then create the actual wooden pieces (Stage 4?). Well I guess it still applies then, if you ignore the bit about adding the wood in photoshop. If you get the photo and trace all the important parts that you want to include in the pattern, then you can remove the photo and you're left with the outline. Then you can start to divide it up into segments (Stage 2) and shade parts with varying levels of grey to show the depth (Stage 3).