Photo of person to fine, detailed line drawing

[Xogroroth]

Greetings all:

Been looking for answer on various sites, but all the results turn out to be very thick lined, and undetailed.
Tried to figure out a way to get far thinner lines, while at the same time, add far more detail.
This is what I generally get:


but this is what I am looking for at the bare minimum:


Preferably even more detailed, with all the hair strains showing.

Nowhere did I find a good tutorial for this, although, I read, there is an automation for this, a plugin, but the author did not speak of how it was called.

If anyone can help me out, please?

Thank you.
Xog.

[rich2005]

As with most things graphical it all depends on the original image, never any hard-n-fast rules.

What you can try is starting off with the gimp_gmic_qt plugin - http://www.gmic.eu - the example uses the Artistic > Illustration Look (there are others) to get a smoothed effect. 

Then the Gimp Destaturate -> Color to Gray using a small radius, about 24 (default is 300)

   

[nelo]

Do this search


And it'll lead you to some YT tutorials
Would that help?

[Krikor]

I agree with rich2005, it will depend a lot on the original image.

There are steps that give good results with one image but not with others.

I tried but didn't get anything close to the result you want.

   

I searched for your second image posted here on the forum. My idea was to find the original image and work on it in order to achieve the result you posted.

I ended up finding your image on an AI website, generated with the following prompt: "highly detailed pencil sketch portrait of a beautiful woman with blonde hair".

Perhaps using an AI website is an option.

[denzjos]

Photo from free site (https://jooinn.com/smiling-girl-portrait.html). This is what I tried : 
Colours / Desaturate / Mono Mixer
GMic-Qt / Testing / Photocomix / Graphic Boost-Old
Copy layer 
Filters / Edge-Detect / Edge
Colours / Invert
Opacity layer 25%
Try also different layer modes in combination with layer opacity.
   
   

[Ofnuts]

With regular Gimp: Filters > Edge-Detect > Edge, and Colors > Invert

[sallyanne]

Try Colours / Desaturate / Colour to grey. This is at default.