Converting Photos to Comic Art

1. Tone: First open up the photo by going to the Gimp toolbar palette, and selecting File > Open and navigate to your folder where your JPEGs are. Then immediately "save a copy as" a GimpShop *.xcf, the native file format for Gimp. After you've saved it to your folder, begin the treatment by duplicating the background layer, and from that layer going to Image > Adjustments > Posterize and choose 6. Then go to Filter > Enhance > Unsharp Mask and apply these settings: Radius 100.0, Amount 1.75, and Threshold 150.
   
2. Color: Duplicate the Background layer again, and drag it to the top of the layer set in the palette. Next, go to Filter > Sharpen > Dilate. Then, go to Image > Adjustments > Hue-Saturation... and select. Leave the Hue at 0, set the Lightness to 50, the Saturation to 80, and click OK. Set it's blending mode to "Color"
3. Ink: Again, duplicate the Background layer another time, move it to the top and go to Filter > Artistic > Cartoon and apply 20.00 for the Mask radius & 0.150 for the Percent Black. Next, go to Image > Adjustments > Threshold and set the left slider to 75, and click OK. Then, go to Filter > Artistic > Photocopy and apply these settings. Mask Radius: 50.00, Sharpness: 0.700, Percent black: 0.750, Percent white: 0.200 . Set the blending mode to "Multiply".
   
4. Dot Screen: Create a new blank layer below Ink and label it Dot Screen. Doubble-click the foreground color palette, and change the RGB values to 128, 128, and 128. Then go Edit > Fill with FG Color and it should fill the layer with 50% gray. The go to Filter > Distort > Newsprint and change only, the cell size to 4, and click OK. Now change the Blending Mode to Overlay.
5. Optional Tweaks: Now that you have done this tutorial in its entirety, you can optionally paint on color to make sure that parts, like eyes and teeth are white, by creating a blank "White" layer above the Tone layer, and a "Painted Color" layer above the original Color layer, to make sure and see if any other colors need touching up.
6. Saving: Save and Export the file in two different formats. One (if you have not already done so) the *.xcf native GimpShop format for further editing and tweaking, and one as a *.jpg for importing into ComicLife.