One of my reservations in switching to Linux was Photoshop. I really like Photoshop and I’m comfortable with it. In order to get comfortable with GIMP, I decided to do a few little projects. One of the filters that I really missed from photoshop was anisotropic filtering, but I found a wonderful filter for GIMP called Greycstoration.
I took the original files, erased the background, touched them up, and converted them to greyscale. Then I created multiple layers with varying degrees of threshold applied. Then I used the sobel difference of gausians to add some edge highlights. I adjusted the opacity on the layers to achieve the posterize effect, and then used the greycstoration filter to smooth everything out. Here are the results with the originals.
I found your site looking for a gimp tutorial. I’m trying to accomplish something like you’re effect above. I’ve figured out most of your steps, but haven’t found the “greycstoration” filter (is it included w/ Gimp or a plug-in?). I’m also not getting the smooth edges & cartoon-like finish you have. Do you have a more detailed process available for me to use?
Thanks for your time!
Aaron
Here’s a link to the GREYCstoration download on sourceforge: http://cimg.sourceforge.net/greycstoration/
Just download the plugin, unzip it, read the readme file, and put the right file in your GIMP plugin directory (in linux this is /usr/lib/gimp/2.0/plug-ins/)
Using the GREYCstoration filter can do an excellent job of smoothing out rough edges and giving you that “cartoon-like” look you’re looking for. Sometimes, I can’t quite get enough power out of it, but the ‘iterations’ slider at the bottom comes in handy at running it several times. Just be careful if you’ve got a large file, it can take some computing power!
Bri
Thanks so much. I’ll give it a try.
Aaron
You should make a tutorial on how to do this.