Styles
Anime Portrait From Your Photo
Most anime filters produce a generic anime face. The interesting problem is the other one: keeping the specific person legible through a style that flattens everything into line and flat colour.
What it does to a photograph
Redraws you with cel shading, hard-edged highlights and the saturated palette of television animation, while preserving the proportions that identify a face: the distance between the eyes, the shape of the jaw, the hairline. The background becomes illustrated rather than photographic.
Which photo to use
Front-facing and evenly lit. Strong side shadows confuse the flattening step, because cel shading has to decide where one tone ends and the next begins, and a gradient gives it no edge to find.
What people use it for
Profile pictures, avatars for streaming and gaming, gifts for people who watch a lot of animation, and anyone who wants a portrait that is unmistakably drawn rather than filtered.