Anime Cel Portrait

What this action does

flat cel-shaded linework, bold anime colour. You give the app a single photograph and it returns a new still image of you in that style. This one does not move: it is a restyle rather than an animation, and the picture is rebuilt in the style rather than having a filter laid over it. Nothing is photographed and nothing is recovered, so the result is a new picture that resembles the one you supplied.

What photo works best

Cel shading flattens a face into a few zones, so the light in the original should already be simple. A frontal portrait, head and shoulders, softly and evenly lit, with the eyes large in the frame. Hair with a clear silhouette translates into linework much better than hair blowing loose. Take glasses off if you can, since a reflection becomes a solid shape. A photograph lit from several directions at once gives the flat shading contradictory zones to resolve.

What to expect

One photograph goes in and a new still picture comes out, restyled rather than filtered: the model rebuilds the frame in the style instead of laying an effect over it. Run it twice if the first attempt gets a detail wrong, because the second version will not be identical.

If the result is not convincing, the fix is almost always the photograph rather than the settings. Reshoot it wider, get more light on the face, and move the arms clear of the body. The rest of what decides the result applies to every action here, and the limits apply to this one too.