I found a program in the Google Play Store the other day called Photo Painter. As the name suggests, it takes a photograph and renders it in various artistic styles…quite a few painting styles, and several sketching styles. You can then apply a realistically rendered 3D frame. I have used a similar program on the laptop called Dynamic Auto Painter. I am still exploring the features of Photo Painter, but the results so far are promising…if you like this kind of thing.

I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, you can produce some nice effects…on the other what you have created is neither a painting or a photograph. At best it is a photograph processed to look something like a painting. “Ah,” you say (or at least I think) “but is it art?”

Then too, I am fresh from an encounter with a software expert for one of the makers of image processing plug-ins, who claimed that he turned his images into paintings using the software he was demonstrating because he was such a bad photographer. He seemed proud of the fact. That is just sad, and I, personally, do not want to go there. I promise I will never try to save an image by processing it as a painting.

This image, however, stands on its own as a photograph (imho). Processing it as a painting does not make it better…only different.

Samsung Smart Camera WB800F in Rich Tone mode. Processed in Snapseed and rendered as a painting in Photo Painter the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.

Oh, and it is Cascade Falls in Saco Maine.

And for those who are wondering, here is the image with standard processing.