Interested in turning photographs into works of digital art, such as cartoons, charcoal drawings, ink drawings, oil paintings, pastel drawings, and watercolors? Here are brief descriptions of some key software tools for desktop computers. Unless otherwise noted they work in Photoshop as plug-ins.

FotoSketcher

FotoSketcher is a versatile free standalone Windows program that allows you to create drawings, paintings, and a few other effects. It can transform photos into cartoons, oil paintings, oil pastel drawings, pen and ink drawings, pencil drawings, watercolor paintings. and other types of artworks. It is freeware.

Sliders and other controls for each effect allow you modify image rendition. For example, for the oil pastel sketch effect you can control minimum stroke size, maximum stroke size, number of iterations, edge intensity, and filter precision. You can also soften edges, add a frame, add texture, add text, and use a retouch brush. There is a small preview window in the floating control panel.

This program is especially useful for oil pastel drawings.

Snap Art by Exposure

Snap Art is a full-featured program that allows you to easily create charcoal drawings, color pencil drawings, comics, crayon drawings. impasto paintings, oil paintings, pastel drawings (including hard, oil, and soft pastel), pen and ink drawings, pencil sketches, Pointillism paintings, stylized illustrations, and watercolor paintings.

There are a variety of presets for each effect, and slider controls for background (e.g,, for oil paint: brush size, photorealism, coverage, stroke length, and color variation), detail masking (similar controls as background), colors (e.g., brightness, contrast, and saturation), lighting (e.g., angle, direction, and highlight characteristics as well as vignette effect), and canvas effects (e.g, pastel paper). You can create your own presets. The ability to close side-panel controls permits a large preview space.

This program is especially useful for oil paintings. It has good canvas and paper texture effects.

Dynamic Auto-Painter by MediaChance

Dynamic Auto-Painterallows you to paint in the style of famous painters, such as Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, and Vincent van Gogh. It allows you to create a wide variety of types of artworks.

There are a variety of controls for each preset, such as brush strokes, canvas, detail brushes, faithfulness, realism, palette, and quality. It supports advanced (e.g, color shift), retouch, outline, canvas, material, color, and layer adjustments. It is highly customizable. Artwork rendering occurs in stages, with further user fine-tuning possible during some stages. It typically renders vivid, saturated images and may change the colors of base images.

While the presets can be used to easily create artworks, the real power of this program is not revealed until you start using the numerous advanced controls and directing brush strokes during the creation process. As the program typically makes very dramatic changes to images, you are likely to experiment with a number of adjustments to get desired effects. To start, you may want to try the Acry-Real or Aqua-Real effects, which create more realistic images.

This standalone program is especially useful for acrylic and aquelle paintings.

Other Digital Art Software to Consider

Depending on your artistic requirements and style, the following software may also be of interest.

Useful Photo Editing Software

The following software is recommended for editing artistic works:

  • Exposure (powerful full-featured photo editor with numerous useful presets; highly recommended)
  • Luminar Neo (powerful full-featured photo editor; very highly recommended)
  • Topaz Gigapixel AI (the best program to enlarge and enhance images; very highly recommended)
  • Topaz Photo AI (especially useful for denoise and sharpen capabilities; recommended)

AI Art Generators

For an evaluation for AI art generator programs see: “Best AI Art Generators 2024: Top Tools for Creating AI Artwork.” I use Midjourney, which now has a web interface.

My Current Typical Workflow

If I’m starting with a very small image, such as one from Midjourney, I will enlarge it to 4x in Topaz Gigapixel AI. I may denoise and sharpen the image at the same time. I will then resize it to a standard photographic format (e.g., 8×10″) in Exposure Blow Up and save it as a TIF file at 300 px/inch. If the image size is adequate, I start with Blow Up and denoise it (I use a program that has been replaced by Topaz Photo AI). In Photoshop, I will do a preliminary edit at a 200% expansion view. I then do extensive editing in Luminar Neo followed by using special effects from Exposure. Another round of Photoshop editing is next. If I want to add oil painting effects, I will use AKVIS ArtWork, AKVIS OilPaint, or Exposure Snap Art. If I want to add an oil pastel effect, I will convert the file to a JPG or PNG, then use FotoSketcher, and then convert it back to a TIF in Photoshop. I often use these art programs at low settings. A final round of Photoshop editing completes the process.

Purchase Advice

It is highly recommended that you download and test digital art software demos prior to purchase. Try all the presets. A software company's idea of what a good art effect is may not match your own, so experiment with changing the settings of unsatisfactory effects before concluding that the program cannot do what you want.

Some programs do not have a variety of presets. It is more difficult to create your own presets from scratch rather modifying presets.

It is especially important to test the limits of a program and to determine what features can be disabled. For example, see how much detail you can get in a painting and check whether it is possible to turn off the texture effect (i.e, canvas).

In some cases, it is worth buying a program for one or two unique effects even though the rest may not be satisfactory or may duplicate effects you already have in other programs.

If possible, save older versions of software. New versions may drop or significantly change features you rely on.

Some companies may end access to and support for discontinued software, even disabling previously working local copies that use online logins.

Software Licensing and Sales Policies

AKVIS has separate home, home deluxe, and business licenses. Only business licenses allow commercial use.

Companies may offer one or more software bundles, which reduce the prices of included products.

Some companies, such as Exposure, offer their products at substantial discounts during sales, which typically occur during major US holidays. These are especially good times to buy software bundles.

About the Author

Digital artist Charles W. Bailey, Jr. transforms public domain and personal photographs into noncommercial digital artworks using specialized Photoshop plug-ins and art programs. He has made over 700 digital artworks freely available under versions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licenses, providing detailed information about how each artwork was created.