No, and the difference shows in the shading. A filter runs an edge-detect over the pixels and leaves you with a grey, flattened photo, not a sketch. This rebuilds the image as marks — the tone follows the bone structure, the strokes follow the hair direction, and the edges fade out the way a real hand stops drawing. That is why it survives being printed, and a filtered photo usually does not.

A sharp picture with the face evenly lit and real contrast between light and shadow. Graphite is entirely tone, so a flat, evenly-lit snapshot gives the model nothing to shade with, and a dim or blurry original makes the contour lines uncertain. Front-facing portraits with a plain background work best.

Yes. Describe it and the artwork follows — soft tonal graphite, tight cross-hatching, clean single-weight line art, loose charcoal with smudged shadows, or a quick gesture study. A clearer, more specific brief gives a closer result than a vague one, so it helps to name the medium and the level of detail rather than leaving them to chance. If the first pass is close but not quite there, adjust one detail and generate again.

That is the whole reason for starting from a real photo — the model keeps the face, the hair and the expression while it redraws them in graphite. A clear, well-lit original holds the likeness best; a dark or low-resolution one gives it less to work from, so the closer the input, the closer the drawing.

It depends on the resolution you pick and how many versions you generate, and the estimate is on screen before you press the button. Free credits arrive with the account, and a failed run is never charged — so you can try tonal graphite, then line art, then charcoal, without watching a meter tick up on every attempt.