First I will give you the general instructions for converting a photo to a character and then some options below. These instructions assume you have prior experience at imaging, or have at least read through the other tutorials on this site.

Take your picture to an IM Studio. Net4, Net11 or Amish work best with the Color Burn option we use here. Crop and chop off any background you don't want. Resize the image to the desired size to work with.

Output this image in order to get the temporary URL. Back up to your original image.

Click on Decorate. Type 1x1 +3+3 in the parameter box. Put a color in the color box (see chart below). Click on border. Choose Color Burn from the drop down menu. Click Decorate.

After color burn you can leave your image like this if you like it, or you can tone it down by going in to Composite. Put the Temporary URL in the box. Click on Colorize, and then Composite.

From here you can Annotate the face features in using the dingbats of your choice.

Different face and hair color work better with different Deco colors. You can try different colors to see how they come out. Do both the Decorate and Composite steps to see the final result.
Face/Hair Type	Decorate Color
Light hair Light skin	peachpuff or bisque
Dark hair Light skin	wheat or tan
Dark hair Dark skin	burlywood or sandybrown