Colored Pencils effect with Gimp 2.

8+Gmic
By: Ramon Miranda
Colored Pencils effect with Gimp 2.8 and G'MIC 2 de 9

Index of contents
Choosing the right photo or illustration......................................................................................3

Part 1...........................................................................................................................................4

Part 2...........................................................................................................................................5

Presets.........................................................................................................................................8

TIPS............................................................................................................................................8

GMIC intro................................................................................................................................8

Conclussion.................................................................................................................................9

License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/

2012 by Ramn Miranda. This document may be reproduced in whole or in part without
permission from the author. Feel free to use this tutorial for any and all educational applications. I
enjoy emails from other painters and gimp users, so please let me know if you find another uses for
this tutorial.
Inquiries and comments can be directed to mirandagraphic@gmail.com This document, and other
information, can be found at my webpage. Www.ramonmiranda.com
Colored Pencils effect with Gimp 2.8 and G'MIC 3 de 9

We see very often that digital computer done works tend to be too much digital with perfect
gradients and no textured look. Often, this perfection can make our works less atractive. But ,Can
we have the better of both worlds? Yes, thanks to Gimp and one of his plugins G'MIC. So now we
are going to simulate a very cool effect. It will produce that people feel more interested in our work.
Let's get started!

The effect has two parts.

1. The Texture pass. It mimics the grain or color pencils strokes. It is made of two layers in
softlight mode with 100% opacity. This way we have more control over the effect intensity.
This pass musnt be too dark or too bright. This pass makes the image usually darker.

2. Contour pass. Helps to define better the strokes and edges. We use one layer in softlight
mode with 100% opacity. This pass control the overall image exposure or brightness.

Choosing the right photo or illustration

First of all, we need a photo or illustration to apply the effect. But What type of photo will produce
better results? That is a good question, because sometimes we don't get the best results and we cant
say that the photo or illustration is the reason of that. Maybe we have choosen a bad photo for the
effect. In this case, we get better results with not too much contrasted photos because the softlight
mode changes the local contrast. Also, if the photo has too much detail we can apply a light blur
with Filter/Blur/Blur

The photo used here shows the tipical still life with warm tones. These type of images are very
useful to study the light behaviour and are very easy to compose with basic stuff like drapes, fruit
and cans. I tried to use old fruit because it has more texture and more colors, This is a more real
approach and is beauty.

Figure 1.1
Colored Pencils effect with Gimp 2.8 and G'MIC 4 de 9

Part 1.
The first step is to apply a texture pass. We duplicate the background layer. This way we have a
back up of the image. We select the menu Filter/G'MIC. We find it at the end of the filter list. Once
selected, G'MIC opens a new dialog where we can see different areas with lot of parameters. If you
never have used G'MIC you can go to the G'MIC intro section for a quick intro. If you know how
to use G'MIC you can continue reading.

We search the Black & White / Hard Sketch filter and Adjust the settings as in figure.

Figure 1.2

We click on Accept to apply the filter and we see an image like this.

Figure 1.3
Colored Pencils effect with Gimp 2.8 and G'MIC 5 de 9

At first view is something weird, but we can fix it easily changing the blending mode from normal
to softlight. We duplicate this layer to increment the effect. Now we see a texture that covers all the
image.

Figure 1.4

We may think.. Why we duplicate the layers if they share the same blending mode? Wouldnt be
better to combine both layers and adjust the overall effect using curves? Not in this case.
And what if we duplicate the layer again? Well, we'll get an incremental effect.(possibly too much)

Surrounding the glass-can we see radial lines that maybe you like or not but they are inherent of the
use of G'mic filter hard sketch. These radial lines appear when there are long lines in the main
image. Sometimes contribute to the image improving it. sometimes not. We can control a bit this
artifact using layer masks.

Part 2.
The next step is create a contour pass. This will help to balance the contrast and brightness on the
image. Also makes the edges more visible.
We duplicate the main layer, the layer with no effects and we put it over the rest of the layers. We
go to Filter/G'MIC. There we select again the hardsketch filter. We need now to adjust the
parameters to obtain edges so we put the values as we see in the following figure.
Colored Pencils effect with Gimp 2.8 and G'MIC 6 de 9

Figure 1.5

We click on Accept and we change the blending mode from normal to softlight. This makes the
contours more marked and also generates an outline in the highlights as we see on the figure.
Darker parts now tend to be brighter washing the blacks in the image.

Figure 1.6
Colored Pencils effect with Gimp 2.8 and G'MIC 7 de 9

Tip: If you apply a contour pass and you see image becames too bright go to Colors/Curves and
adjust the graph as you see on the following image.

Figure 1.7

Now we have all the layers available to be tweaked. This give us a lot of control. We can change
each layer opacity and blending mode to see different effects. For example we can make another
duplicate from the contour pass and change the blending mode to grain extract . This way we can
remove the outlines or create interesting creative effects.

Figure 1.8
Colored Pencils effect with Gimp 2.8 and G'MIC 8 de 9

Presets
We can store presets inside G'MIC. This way, we can create presets for the texture pass and
contour pass Once created, they will appear in the favourites section in the upper part of filter
list. To create a preset we need to adjust the filter parameters as we want and then click on +
symbol. This icon is placed on the bottom part of the filter list.

TIPS
Works better with not too much sharpened images.
Works better (faster) with image size about 1000 px (the longer side)
Dont use the magnifier inside g-mic for this filter in the preview window

GMIC intro
Basic explanation of G'MIC plugin

Figure 1.9

1. Preview area for the selected filter.

2. Input/Output area . This tells G'MIC where to apply the filter. And which layers are taken
into account to compute the effect.
3. The filter list.It has several cathegories.
4. Filter parameters area.
5. This is the place were we choose between some options related with the selected filter:
Quits G'MIC without applying the filter
Reset the selected filter
Maximize the area that G'MIC
Apply the filter without quiting G'MIC. This allows us to select another filter and link
filters without quiting G'MIC
Accept the selected filter and quits G'MIC
Colored Pencils effect with Gimp 2.8 and G'MIC 9 de 9

Conclussion
Is that all? No way, we have only explored a filter and a blending mode. Possibly all this process
can be converted into a new filter with some options. So i encourage you to share your experiments
and improvements by mail or in my blog. It would be nice if you thank also David Tschumperl for
his work with G'MIC.what a great project, to be suported!

I hope you liked this tutorial. Bye and see you next time.