Hey David; the flow is as simple as outlined (the animation stunk; not sure why this site plays it so fast; lol). Like your result too. Thanks for all the replies as well. Very good result O. Man, I like G'MIC; so many ways to do things just inside it. The texture blending I didn't outline, but what I did was copy my flattened result after the Kuwahara step and used it as a mask for the texture that I applied (actually inverted it since I mainly wanted to get the darks the texture and not so much the lights. Also, with a copy of the same texture I set to darken and reduced the opacity way down to taste (wanted some texture on the lights too but no as much as I wanted to on the darks). My secret now revealed. lol

You also just ninja'd me Mahvin and thanks too.

Nice effect, Lyle. Gives somewhat of an impressionistic look to the image.

It reminds me a little of inkwash variation effect in this thread

Hi Lyle, I took some time to try coding the G'MIC filter that would correspond to your proposed pipeline. This is probably far from perfect, but at least it is working ! You should be able to find it in 'Artistic / Lylejk painting', after a filter update, in G'MIC 1.5.0.2+. Let me know if it is working well for you !
Below is an example of what I get by using this (automatic) filter :


Enjoy

By the way PhotoComiX, I need to answer a lot of questions, and I will, but please let me some time

Works for me, David. But I haven't played with the settings, yet.

Somehow missed that thread Tux; like those results.

To David; some controls that would be cool to control are an option for texture or not, and, w.r.t. to the Kuwahara step, retain sliders for radius and repeat since some play here I found may be necessary for the end result. Still cool to have the whole process automated now. You know how much I like making the computer do all the work (since I'm lazy). lol

One more. I also used Filters > Artistic > Apply Canvas with a depth of 2. David's image has canvas, and I like that addition.

I tried the twins but I think that flowers work better.

Molly, try adding a glow to the twins before running the fake painting effect. I think you'll be more impressed.

where do I find that Mahv?

Similar to a vignette, but diminishing the background around the twins. The background is too busy to allow the twins to stand out. Saulgoode gave an example of using drop shadow for glow, but instead of using a white drop shadow to brighten the twins, use it as a mask to diminish the background instead. Then run the fake painting filter. I can't show you using your own image because you only have the "after" result. I'd need the original image to help clarify what I mean.

With background:


Without background:


I guess it really boils down to the eye of the beholder. :/

Here is the original Mahv.

Not sure how this is an improvement. I will say that should David give us some sliders to increase/decrease the effect on the image, it might have a better output. Smaller object areas on the image tend to get overdone.

Something Norman Rockwell'ish:

The effect works best on larger images Molly, so I first resized your original and then followed by G'MIC's Pen preset before running the cool new preset that David put together for me. I did blend in some additional texture afterwards.

That is way kewl Lyle thanks.
I am going to have to try figure that out how you got the lighting in the forground.

mahvin, love the NORMAN ROCKWELL look. I always loved these pictures on the cover of all the Saturday Evening Post Magazines. He had such a great imagination.

You know, GMIC's pen filter really punches up the twins pic. It looks great just with that filter, too. Just use pen drawing in artistic at default. You'll love it. I threw some of PC's filters in and, lots of great looks, too many to show. But Lyle keeps us entertained for hours with his experiments.

Remember Lyle's soft focus preset? Another winner:

Thanx Mahv, I am going to check that pen filter out pronto. I like the way it gave the pic more color, mine is sort of faded and dead looking.

Re-check my last post, you ninja-ed me, Molly.

Hey Mahv (or anyone), I looked under presets and I don't have pen preset. I looked under the other dropdowns and don't see it. Please, can you guide me to it? thanx

Hi there,

I've added some parameters to the 'Lylejk's painting' filter in G'MIC. Just refresh the filters and it should be available for you. Here is a screenshot of the filter in action :

Thank you very much. I was looking under presets > pen filter.