Need help changing photo-cant make this work

[theweblady]

Hi,
Im hoping someone can help me. I have a color photo I need to turn into a coloring book page.
Im using gimp 2.10.14
I have tried everything I can find about doing this with older versions of gimp but when I use those directions they don't work as the menu has changed. There doesn't seem to be any documentation on how to do this in this version. Can anyone do me a favor and walk me thru this? When I try it the old way I just wind up with black and white blobs. 

I am starting with a color photo that is a jpg.
I turn it into greyscale.
I need to make a duplicate to work on.

now what? It needs to wind up a lined pic suitable to use as a coloring page.

Thanks so much!

[denzjos]

Try on a color photo  'Filters / Artistic / Photocopy' and use 'Colour / Curves' or 'Colour / Levels' to finetune. 

   
   

[denzjos]

There is another way to get a BW drawing to color : 

- load the photo
- copy the layer ( name it BW)
- Colours / Desaturate / Desaturate
- copy the layer BW (name it INVERT)
- invert the INVERT layer : Colours / Invert
- set the layer mode on the INVERT layer to 'Hard Mix'
- on the layer INVERT : Filters / Blur / Gaussian Blur (value 3 or 4)
- merge the layer INVERT down withe the layer BW
- delete the photo layer
- use the curves / levels to finetune the result
- use Colours / Brightness-Contrast to finetune more 

One remark : I can't use the curve / levels on the result picture. I have to export it to a .jpg file and then load this file back in Gimp. A bug in Gimp 2.10.14 (windows 10) ????? or do I miss something ??????

   

[rich2005]

No curve ? I think it is because that part of the procedure the  image is black / white.

   

For a colouring book ? Image choice is going to be important. For me the cat, while a lovely subject is a bit too 'busy'.

Might be better leaving the background as is, simplify down to outlines, some handwork perhaps. Needs more time devoted to it   https://i.imgur.com/nxn5vR2.jpg

[denzjos]

Ok rich2005, I've zoomed in on the picture and there was only pure black and white. Learned something again.
What I want to do was to get rid of some 'noise' pixels to make the picture more clean to color in (I know, it's not the best photo to convert to a drawing).
I've blurred the result to get some grey and then used the curve tool, result :

     

rich2005, thank you for the clarification

[rich2005]

theweblady has posted an image of the cat on gimpusers.com https://www.gimpusers.com/system/attachm...1581731273

A larger image, easier to tweak but I think needs a different edge detect than Gimp provides. Using the gimp_gmic plugin. Get it from http://www.gmic.eu  The windows installer works very well. @theweblady There is a MacOSX version there as well, but when it comes to OSX you lose me

I might do it something like:
(1) Make it lighter, Colors -> Levels and reduce the max value
(2) Desaturate the image Colors -> Desaturate -> Desaturate

   

This is where I deviate from basics and use the gmic plugin.
(3) In gmic contours -> edges with small-ish values. (please experiment, nothing ever set in stone) The preview does not look promising but with a larger image.
(4) Gives this, which I think is more colouring book style...but all depends on the image used, some will be easier than others.

   

[theweblady]

Thank you so much!
They look wonderful!
I feel like there is actually a chance that I can make this work-
I cannot thank you all enough for all your hard work and advice-
Gimp is challenging but I think with the help I have received that I might be able to do this-
YOU ROCK!!