Photography and Art - Photos Transformed into Oil Paintings & More

While testing various editing (aka post-processing) programs, I found several that offer ways to make photos look like oil paintings or similar artworks.  I wondered if there were programs made specifically for this and found two that worked really well.  One is extremely fast and gives very good, although slightly limited results compared to the other one which is very slow but mimics famous painters/artists of the past.  The fast one allows for batch processing (doing many images at once) after which you can give individual tweaks to a photo.  I was able to convert hundreds in a very short time.  In this one, you can vary the brush size, stroke size, stroke curvature, and several other variables.  You can also make line art which you'll see in the lower images.

The other program only allows you to do one photo at a time - each one can take from about 3 minutes up to 20 minutes or more.  Each one in this program has presets (around 170 of them) which look like a particular famous painter or artist (such as Van Gogh, Monet, LeRoy Neiman, Cezanne, etc.) although you can change settings to make the work have your own style or a mixed style of your own and the well-known artist.  The output size is also much larger.

It should be noted that after I photograph an image, the first thing I do is post-process in Lightroom to adjust lighting, contrast, and color as I shoot in RAW format.  Next, I either go to Photoshop if needed, or Portrait Pro to make sure everything is perfect.  Then I would go to one of these programs for the painterly look.  For example, the photos after Cathy Moriarty were shot in bright sun at around 2 p.m. as it was unplanned.

Because I can't post full-size images here (they would be, perhaps, 30x40 or 40x50) what I can do is post the full image in reduced size along with a tiny cropped part of the image to give you an idea of what the full size would look like.  Some of the styles work better for landscapes and sunsets, others for portraits, some for either.  Below are some examples of images from the programs.

Cathy Moriarty, Actress

 All of the above photos are from the slower program that mimics the master artists with minimal input.  All the photos below are from the fast program that uses sliders to vary the brush strokes.

Randy Newman filming "I Love LA" video at Venice Beach