CONVERTING A PHOTO TO SIMPLE PEN/PAINT STROKES' VECTOR OR JPEG

[henryb]

Hello!

Does anyone know if there's a way to take a photo (say of my dog) and transforming it into a very simple (over-simplified lol) vector or even a jpeg image of pen-strokes? I have all 3 of the Affinity apps, but would rather use AP as I'm more "acquainted" with it. 

What I want is to order a custom-made doormat, like in the attached photo, with my dog's image on it - but obviously they can't print anything detailed, nor use shade gradients etc. So my only option is to give them a file that looks as simple as the attached sketch example so that they can use that. So I would like to be able to take an existing photo of my dog (example of an unknown dog's photo attached) and somehow convert it to simple sketch.

Any ideas?

[v_kyr]

For raster/bitmap see:

• Image to pencil sketch (Photoshop tutorial) - sequence not working

• Sketch Effect with Affinity Photo + Free Macro

• Creating a sketch effect, with macro and extras- Affinity Photo

• Pencil effect macro

• ... etc. ...

For vectors use some bitmap-to-vector tracing tool (Inkscape or one of the Online tracers).

1. Prepare your dog image, cutout the background & make a good fine grade selection of the dog. Save the result as a JPG/PNG image.
2. Let the JPG/PNG be processed by the tracing tool, adapt the tracing settings accordingly to your needs, the result will be vectors here then.
3. Save the vector result as PDF/SVG and reuse it in Affinity.

Just a quick one minute take with a vectorizer/tracer and no fine grade selection/preparations at all ...

• dog.afdesign

[henryb]

Thank you - great to know how to do  But, in this specific case (getting the image printed on the custom doormat) it's not at all wh at I need  

- I followed the steps shown in the video you had linked (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AesJUS2yO2c) and got a result close to the one you showed (attached here). Though it may look like a pencil sketch (which is great), it could definitely not be printed on the doormat because apart from the dog's eyes, nose, mouth and paws which are clear black, everything else that makes the dog up (body contour, fur etc) is made of shades of grey. And the doormat printer can't do that.  That's why in my first post I attached a black & white sketch of some dog which was made of thick black lines only. If you see the example of a custom doormat printing, that I had attached initially, you will understand that anything that's designed on it can either be made up of clear black print, or no print at all. So there can be no color gradients nor shades that make the dog's drawing up for this specific use. That's why I wanted to somehow convert a photo of my late dog into an (over)simplified sketch - like the sketch I found online and attached previously. 

Is that even possible to generate from a photo? (Maybe what I need to do simply can't be done?)

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, henryb said:

Though it may look like a pencil sketch (which is great), it could definitely not be printed on the doormat because apart from the dog's eyes, nose, mouth and paws which are clear black, everything else that makes the dog up (body contour, fur etc) is made of shades of grey. And the doormat printer can't do that.

Reduce the image colors to just 2 then, or the amount of colors that printer supports at all. - For a bitmap-to-vector tracing tool adjust the colors to just two for tracing!

[henryb]

9 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Reduce the image colors to just 2 then, or the amount of colors that printer supports at all. - For a bitmap-to-vector tracing tool adjust the colors to just two for tracing!

 

 

I suppose you mean change it to 2 colors, so that only black and white "exist" (and not a color mix that produces shades of black?)? If that's what you meant, and why you said it, can you please tell me how I change this?

 

 

 

[v_kyr]

4 hours ago, henryb said:

I suppose you mean change it to 2 colors, so that only black and white "exist" (and not a color mix that produces shades of black?)? If that's what you meant, and why you said it, can you please tell me how I change this?

Sadly Affinity software doesn't support/saves as 1-bit B&W (...just color/graylevels), so you have to do some workarounds. Like applying a posterize adjustment (level 2) [Posterize Adjustment = Tontrenning in german] on your above greyscale image, or instead apply a B&W conversion and change the layers blend mode to harsh light etc.

 

With a bitmap-to-vector tracer it's easy, there you just have to do a 2 color (B&W) tracing of the image!

[John Rostron]

I find the easiest way to convert to two colours is to use a Threshold Adjustment (Layer > Adjustment > Threshold). You can easily adjust the threshold level using the slider.

John