Hi there again

I want to make colouring book pictures for my students from photographs of themselves (want to see kids get excited about something - give them a picture of themselves to colour in). Right now I am using the cartoon filter, desaturating the image and then painstakingly selecting by colour, each greyscaled set of pixels and then cutting them so that in effect, the image becomes a traced black and white image. I am wondering if there is an easier way to do this - I have tried using the threshold and levels filters - but I find that it makes the image too pop-arty, like those Che Guevara type T-shirt graphics. Ideally I want to literally make the image look like colouring book picture or a stamp. Is there an easier way to do that without having to pick and delete the greyscaled parts of the image? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
Candice

Thanks Chris!

On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 4:45 PM, NoviceGimper wrote:

deally I want to literally make the image look like colouring book picture or a stamp.

Try:

Filters->Edge Detect->Edge...
Use defaults, click OK
Image->Mode->Grayscale
Colors->Invert

Possibly adjust Levels/Curves afterward.

HTH,
Chris

Thanks Seth -
Candice

I've done this for pictures of my family - my daughter loves coloring us. It works best on pictures without a lot of noise to them, but my "recipe" assuming a flattened (1 layer) image is:

1) Blur->Selective Gaussian Blur - use parameters to get rid of details but keep main subject sharp
2) Colors->Desaturate (I usually use Average, but not sure it matters) 3) Edge-Detect->Difference of Gaussians with about 8/33 as the 2 radiuses gets me some basic lines that work good for this on SLR-size photos, use smaller for values near the same ratio for smaller pictures. Goal is to get an outline of the salient features only. 4) Colors->Levels... to make sharp black lines 5) Blur slightly if necessary
6) Save As.. & Print
7) Open box of crayolas and go nuts

If you want to do more of a fake-crayon drawing to wow your friends, change the levels step to have very light grey output instead of dark black; then trace the light grey with heavy crayon before coloring in/shading with lighter shades. As a bit of warning, eyeballs and cheekbones are amazingly hard to get right!

Happy GIMPing,

Seth Burgess

On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 4:54 PM, Chris Mohler wrote:

On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 4:45 PM, NoviceGimper wrote:

deally I want to literally make the image look like colouring book

picture or a stamp.

Try:

Filters->Edge Detect->Edge... Use defaults, click OK
Image->Mode->Grayscale
Colors->Invert

Possibly adjust Levels/Curves afterward.

HTH, Chris
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