Freeware & techniques to turn a digital photo into a line drawing

J. Clarke wrote:

You might want to take a look at inkscape

Thank you for that advice.

1. installed Inkscape (version 0.47 r22583, built Aug 21 2010)
on my Centos 6 64-bit computer using the following command:

$ sudo yum install inkscape

Which installed the following:
- inkscape x86_64 0:0.47-6.el6

And, which also installed these 7 dependencies:
- ImageMagick-c++.x86_64 0:6.5.4.7-6.el6_2
- atlas.x86_64 0:3.8.4-2.el6
- gc.x86_64 0:7.1-10.el6
- gsl.x86_64 0:1.13-1.el6
- libwpg.x86_64 0:0.1.3-4.1.el6
- numpy.x86_64 0:1.4.1-9.el6
- python-nose.noarch 0:0.10.4-3.1.el6

2. I selected the new menu selection:
Applications-Graphics-Inkscape Vector Graphics Editor

4. I opened the original kids1.jpg file:
Inkscape: File-Open-/tmp/kids1.jpg
http://www2.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11776425.jpg

5. Then I simply selected the following menu items:
Inkscape: Edit-Select All
Inkscape: Filters-Image effects-Pencil
Inkscape: File-Save As-/tmp/kids2.jpg

6. I then saved the results as (kids2.jpg) and put both side by side:
$ convert kids1.jpg kids2.svg +append kids3.gif

Here is the result, side by side:
http://www2.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11776480.gif

I'm trying to figure out how to darken and sharpen the lines, but,
Inkscape appears to do the job quite nicely. Thanks!

On Thu, 27 Dec 2012 00:56:51 +0000 (UTC), Tony Palermo wrote:

How do you turn a digital photo into a B&W line drawing?

Some good choices have already been mentioned. You may also have a
look at FotoSketcher:

www.fotosketcher.com

Apart from this, looking for Adobe 8bf filter plugins may be worth
a try, since they are not only supported by payware, but also by
freeware like IrfanView or XNView.

For a quick&dirty way to get outlines, I sometimes just use Relief
and Emboss filter in IrfanView Effect Browser in a row. The result
has to be converted to b/w by Decrease Color Depth, afterwards.

Relief and Emboss carve the outlines more sharply from background
than any of those filters used separately. Since Relief has no
settings attached, it should be used first. The setting for the
Emboss filter should be chosen in a way, that only few details are
kept visible inside the outlines.

BeAr
--
================================================== =========================
= What do you mean with: "Perfection is always an illusion"? =
================================================== =============--(Oops!)===

On Thu, 27 Dec 2012 08:42:44 +0000, William Don**ly wrote:

J. Clarke wrote:

You might want to take a look at inkscape

Thank you for that advice.

There's a simple "pencil" plugin for Gimp too.
http://registry.gimp.org/node/22018

Dave

--
Registered Linux User #444770
Fedora

On 12/26/12 6:56 PM, in article , "Tony Palermo"
wrote:

How do you turn a digital photo into a B&W line drawing?

I was trying to turn a digital photo into a coloring-book style line drawing
as a present for my kid (she likes to color her own personification).

The best I came up with in freeware was using The Gimp.
TheGimp: Filters-Edge Detect-Difference of Gaussians
DoG Edge Detect: Radius 1=3.0, Radius 2=1.0 px [x]Normalize [x]Invert

Do you have a better/easier way to turn a JPG into a simple line drawing?


Don't know about software, but there is a great app made just for that
called "Sketch Me!" for the iPhone.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sketch-me!/id364365478?mt=8

Sounds like just what you're looking for.

Tony Palermo wrote:
Savageduck wrote:

I can only demonstrate the sort of thing (I hope this is what you had
in mind) which could be done in Photoshop Elements or a full version of
Photoshop. I use CS5 to get this effect.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1295663/Fil...4907LCO4ew.jpg

Yes, that's exactly what I mean.

Here is a sample result I got from using the only freeware method
listed yet to convert a JPG family photo to a coloring book album.

http://www3.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11775521.jpg

I came up with
http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/27276475_wv3PMc
and a softly colourized version, too. (Gimp)

-Wolfgang

Dave wrote:

There's a simple "pencil" plugin for Gimp too.
http://registry.gimp.org/node/22018

Thanks for that suggestion.

Having never installed a freeware Gimp plugin before, I wrote this up
for others to benefit, which uses that suggested "Pencil-Drawing" plugin.

0. Choose a picture to turn into a line drawing, e.g., /tmp/kids1.jpg
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11780489.jpg

1. Download the script-fu-pencil-drawing.scm script to /tmp from
http://registry.gimp.org/node/22018

2. Read up on how to handle "scm" files for The Gimp:
http://registry.gimp.org/node/13950

Which says:
If it ends in .scm, put it in the scripts folder.
If it ends in .exe, put it in the plugins folder.
If it ends in .py, put it in the plug-ins folder.

3. Since it ends in scm, locate the proper scripts folder:
$ sudo updatedb; locate gimp| grep -i script
REPORTS: /usr/share/gimp/2.0/scripts/ & ~/.gimp-2.6/scripts/

4. Both directories worked for me, so use your personal preference:
$ sudo cp /tmp/script-fu-pencil-drawing.scm /usr/share/gimp/2.0/scripts/.
or
$ cp /tmp/script-fu-pencil-drawing.scm ~/.gimp-2.6/scripts/.

5. Load the photo to be converted into The Gimp, version 2.6:
$ /usr/bin/gimp kids1.jpg &

6. Convert the picture to a coloring book pencil line drawing & save:
Gimp: Filters-Pencil-Drawing-Blur Radius=4, Strength=1, OK
Gimp: File-Save As-/tmp/kids2.jpg

7. Compare the results, side by side:
$ cd /tmp; /usr/bin/convert kids1.jpg kids2.jpg +append kids3.jpg

See results he
http://www3.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11780526.jpg
================================================== ============
Note: Compare results with this TheGimp basic freeware method:
$ /usr/bin/gimp kids1.jpg &
TheGimp: Filters-Edge Detect-Difference of Gaussians
DoG Edge Detect: Radius 1=3.0, Radius 2=1.0 px [x]Normalize [x]Invert
RESULTS: http://www3.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11775521.jpg

Note: Compare results with this Gimp plugin script freeware method:
$ cp /tmp/script-fu-pencil-drawing.scm ~/.gimp-2.6/scripts/.
$ /usr/bin/gimp kids1.jpg &
Gimp: Filters-Pencil-Drawing-Blur Radius=4, Strength=1, OK
Gimp: File-Save As-/tmp/kids2.jpg
RESULTS: http://www3.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11780526.jpg

Note: Compare results with the Inkscape freeware method:
$ /usr/bin/inkscape /tmp/kids1.jpg
Inkscape: Edit-Select All
Inkscape: Filters-Image effects-Pencil
Inkscape: File-Save As-/tmp/kids2.svg
RESULTS: http://www2.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11776480.gif

Note: Compare results with the Cartoonize freeware method:
http://www.cartoonize.net/
Upload photo from disk: /tmp/kids1.jpg
Select the 15th cartoon effect (3rd column, 5th row)
Press the "Cartoonize Now" button & save the results.
RESULTS: http://www3.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11780666.jpg

Which do you think is best for a family coloring book for toddlers?

B. R. 'BeAr' Ederson wrote:

You may also have a look at FotoSketcher:
www.fotosketcher.com

This FotoSketcher suggestion (www.fotosketcher.com) looks like a great
Windows freeware program to convert family photos to coloring books.

I don't see FotoSketcher in any of the Linux repositories though.

$ yum --noplugins --showduplicates --enablerepo \* --disablerepo c6-media,\*-source,\*debug\* provides "*/fotosketcher"
$ netscape http://pkgs.repoforge.org (look for fotosketcher) &
$ netscape http://pkgs.org/search/?keyword=fotosketcher &

So, I can't test it out (but others can post the results here for us)!

On Thu, 27 Dec 2012 19:20:30 +0000 (UTC), Tony Palermo wrote:

This FotoSketcher suggestion (www.fotosketcher.com) looks like a great
Windows freeware program to convert family photos to coloring books.

I don't see FotoSketcher in any of the Linux repositories though.

I didn't see you requesting a /Linux/ solution, either. ;-) You added
alt.os.linux only /after/ your OP.

FotoSketcher (esp. the portable version) and IrfanView (my other
suggestion) should both run fine with Wine under Linux, though.
Therefore you should be able to test those solutions by yourself.

FotoSketcher can create very differently looking pictures, that all
may be suited for your purpose. One example using b/w pencil2 with
settings Edge threshold 0 | Edge intensity 150 | Stroke length 35 |
Darken/Lighten 255:

http://picturepush.com/public/11781589

A sample outcome from IrfanView with Relief and Emboss_32 filter:

http://picturepush.com/public/11781633

Apart from Wine solutions, the already suggested ones for Gimp
and Inkscape should do everything you need. If you also accept
command line solutions, you should take a closer look at either
ImageMagick or GraphicsMagick:

www.imagemagick.org
www.graphicsmagick.org

Both run natively on Linux and provide "everything" you may ever
think of with regard to image manipulation. - Although it /may/
happen, that nobody will be able to tell you the correct settings
for the more obscure wishes... ;-)

HTH.
BeAr
--
================================================== =========================
= What do you mean with: "Perfection is always an illusion"? =
================================================== =============--(Oops!)===

B. R. 'BeAr' Ederson wrote:

I didn't see you requesting a /Linux/ solution, either.

Ah. Indeed. My mistake. Yes. I added Linux after the fact, which
wasn't fair. Plus, I'll wager most a.c.f readers are on Windows
anyway - so they can benefit from the proposed FotoSketcher & Irfanview
methods.

You should take a closer look at either
ImageMagick or GraphicsMagick:

Good point. I have imagemagick.
I couldn't find graphicsmagick on first inspection, but I'll dig deeper.

I didn't know they had a JPEG to pencil-drawing feature.

In article ,
says...

J. Clarke wrote:

You might want to take a look at inkscape

Thank you for that advice.

1. installed Inkscape (version 0.47 r22583, built Aug 21 2010)
on my Centos 6 64-bit computer using the following command:

$ sudo yum install inkscape

Which installed the following:
- inkscape x86_64 0:0.47-6.el6

And, which also installed these 7 dependencies:
- ImageMagick-c++.x86_64 0:6.5.4.7-6.el6_2
- atlas.x86_64 0:3.8.4-2.el6
- gc.x86_64 0:7.1-10.el6
- gsl.x86_64 0:1.13-1.el6
- libwpg.x86_64 0:0.1.3-4.1.el6
- numpy.x86_64 0:1.4.1-9.el6
- python-nose.noarch 0:0.10.4-3.1.el6

2. I selected the new menu selection:
Applications-Graphics-Inkscape Vector Graphics Editor

4. I opened the original kids1.jpg file:
Inkscape: File-Open-/tmp/kids1.jpg
http://www2.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11776425.jpg

5. Then I simply selected the following menu items:
Inkscape: Edit-Select All
Inkscape: Filters-Image effects-Pencil
Inkscape: File-Save As-/tmp/kids2.jpg

6. I then saved the results as (kids2.jpg) and put both side by side:
$ convert kids1.jpg kids2.svg +append kids3.gif

Here is the result, side by side:
http://www2.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11776480.gif

I'm trying to figure out how to darken and sharpen the lines, but,
Inkscape appears to do the job quite nicely. Thanks!

Inkscape has another way to do it--Path/Trace Bitmap. That gives you a
vector drawing. Try that and select "edge detection".