Hi In Darktable is there a way to take a photo and convert it to black and white contours lines or regions of shade versus light? for example like we see when we google “minimalist line art” greatly simply and extract only level lines of some brightness or intensity, or fill black in areas that are darker but keep lighter areas blank or just with a silhouette (or ideally areas that correspond to regions in 3d or in actual light versus shade of the depicted scene, though id guess that might require some kind of AI etc)
The answer is probably technically yes if you start with a minimal enough picture, but darktable probably isn’t the right application if this is what you want to do.
TBH the line art you linked is so minimal I’d just open it in gimp or krita, import the reference photo, and trace the line you want, then hide the reference photo.
yes as you say i could certainly draw pictures by hand but I’m definitely looking if anyone knows how to do it with darktable software (or some other established linux foss) and not trace it out by hand!
Gimp has a thresholds tool that can be very useful, but I am unsure if it could achieve the effect you desire. Do you know how the images in the provided link were created. They are very nice.
It is not a button. You open your file in GIMP then go >Filters>G’MIC-Qt. Then click on the ‘Artistic’ menu and scroll down and click on ‘LineArt’ and away it goes. A good few sliders to mess with …
… I thickened the lines so more joined up. Looks like it uses some kind of Edge Detection.
I must experiment with the artistic capabilities of GIMP more. I also don’t see DT ever doing stuff like this as it is more appropriate for programs like GIMP.
Just a reminder that, although the GIMP does have an Artistic menu of it’s own, G’MIC has to be downloaded and added as a plugin before the aforesaid ‘LineArt’ can be used.
I installed Gmic a few years ago and it is easy to do and has remained functional even after I upgrade. It is worth the effort. There are a lot of tools there and as I said early I need to explore what is available in there.
