I recently working on the about page for pixls.us when I thought it might be fun to gussy up the portraits. This led me down the rabbit hole of wanting to emulate the hedcut effect that Randy Glass uses for the Wall Street Journal portraits you'll see above the fold.

So I experimented a bit, and finally ended up at something that was not exactly like those, but I thought was interesting enough to share.

So, here's a sample of someone you might know, from a portrait I shot of him at LGM this past year:



And here's an older headshot of my friend Mairi in the same style:



The steps are all on my post here:
patdavid.net: Woodcut/Hedcut(ish) Effect

The steps are basically:


Desaturate the image, and create a duplicate of the layer.
Run G'MIC/Graphic Novel filter, skip local normalization. Set layer opacity to about 40-60% (experiment).
Create new layer from visible.
Run Filters → Artistic → Engrave (not Filters → Distorts → Engrave!).
Set the Line Height ~ 1/100 of image height, black on bottom
On the same engrave layer, run G'MIC → Deformation → Random
Set amplitude to taste
Change layer mode to “Darken only”
Add a layer mask, use the original desaturated layer for the mask
Create new layer from visible
Add a layer mask, using the original desaturated layer for mask again (or the mask from previous layer)
Adjust levels of layer to brighten it up a bit
Create (another) new layer from visible
Set background color to white
Run Filters → Distorts → Erase Every Other Row...
Set to columns, and fill with BG color
Set layer blend mode to “Overlay”
Then fiddle with it until it looks good.

That is too funny (Stipple/hedcut portraits), your timing was ideal.

Patdavid

I don't have engrave in filter artistic

same here

filters/distort/engrave

Don't use this engrave. Use the improved one on the registry (hang on, getting the link - it's actually in the post also).

Here it is on the registry. Works fine in the latest releases.

And thank you all very much for trying it out and giving me some feedback!

yeah, I had a good laugh over that as well! (I posted in that thread also). Too funny.

I look forward to the next one Graechan.

Not a very big picture but this is my try

Found it easier to follow your tut on your blog. Thanks.
Changed the line width and gave her a white background

I'm curious if using a bump-map of the image would improve this effect any?

Another result from playing around (from the GIMP team):

here's my try (an old photo of friends and I).


another try with thicker line width in the Engrave step.


another try, but this time i displaced the engraved layer (after the random deformation) using the original gray scale as displacement map (you have to do layer to image size on the layers since random deformation might change your layer's dimensions). The at the end i moved the graphic novel layer up to the 2nd position just under the "erase every other row" layer.

I suggest we call it "Floor Street Journal" style..heheh kidding.

I gave this a shot and here are my results.

The only thing about this attempt is, that it could have been a bit smoother looking.

I think the images with white backgrounds look much better when using this style.

I'm of the same opinion.

Hah, this is an awesome result!