How to achieve this photoillustration look in Darktable?

[Alteus]

I’m a huge fan of this, but I can’t seem to recreate even similar look in Darktable (or in ART).
https://pixls.us/articles/highlight-bloom-and-photoillustration-look/

Attached the original image on which I tried to experiment.

[paperdigits (Mica)]

The original tutorial uses gimp and gmic, both of which are Foss, why not use those?

[Alteus]

Because if possible, I don’t want to use 3 programs to achieve this result. I don’t need a pixel perfect recreation, just a similar look.

[patdavid]

@Iain actually did the whole series of steps in G’MIC with this:

Here's some kind "Lucisart" processing using G'MIC filters

This set of GMIC commands gets a very similar result. --gimp_anisotropic_smoothing[0] 10,0.16,0.63,0.6,2.35,0.8,30,2,0,1,1,0,1 -sub[0] [1] -simplelocalcontrast_p[1] 25,1,50,1,1,1.2,1,1,1,1,1,1 -gimp_graphic_novelfxl[1] 1,2,6,5,20,0,1,100,0,1,0,0.78,1.92,0,0,2,1,1,1,1.26,0.37,1.05 -add -c 0,255

[priort (Todd Prior)]

Well your task kind of calls for it… DT is a raw processor…not an effects generator…not to say you cannot do some creative stuff with it but this is not its purpose…

[paperdigits (Mica)]

You can probably achieve part of it with diffuse and sharpen’s bloom preset with an overlay mode.

[Alteus]

That’s what I wanted, thanks!

Diffuse and sharpen with multiply, some tone and contrast equalizer and color balance RGB. Need some refinement, but it’s a good start.