Are these pictures worth a thousand words?
OilPaint turns your photographs into oil paintings, and does it well. Art editing apps with an oil painting filter aren’t exactly thin on the ground, but as OilPaint is designed specifically for this task, it’s far more capable and configurable.
You can turn any photo into an artwork with OilPaint. Instead of simply laying a texture over the image, the app accurately reproduces the artist’s brush strokes, giving a much better impression of an oil painting. We’re told it’s ‘widely used by design and animation studios, media and video games creators, professional artists and illustrators’, which we can quite believe.
The app has had an impressive overhaul with Version 10. There’s an all-new photo-to-painting algorithm, which better simulates the actions of an artist. Brush strokes are more natural looking, and processing the pictures is faster. The user interface has been updated too. You now get three options for customising your photo; Express for speed, Advanced for full control over your tools and Presets which lets you choose from a range of pre-constructed settings with a single click. You can import and export settings, load and save guiding lines, print, save and share your image and more. The tools are easily accessible and straightforward to use.
The art of art
Artistic elements such as the strength and density of the brush strokes and how the app deals with empty spaces are configurable too. Its Simplicity setting, for example, deals with how most fine details are lost in the paintwork. At Simplicity’s minimum setting, it looks like it’s been painted in with a very small brush, but ramp that figure up and it gains a more impressionist feel. Likewise the size and direction of the brush strokes can be customised, lighter areas can be added if the results are too dark and empty areas can be filled or left alone, according to taste. If all this sounds intimidating, it isn’t. Just tweak the picture to see what happens, and review the presets we mentioned earlier.
Naturally, standard art-package adjustments such as brightness, contrast, hue, saturation and distortions can be customised too. Ther
