Have you ever dreamed of giving your pictures the look and feel of real oil paints?
Maybe you want your website to stand out from the crowd or share it with your friends
But you don’t have any experience in oil painting and can’t bother to go through the effort of making one.
Thanks to advances in digital software, it is possible to make your pictures look like oil paintings without the use of oil paints by using what’s called an oil painting filter.
What is an Oil Painting Filter?
An oil painting filter turns photos into images with various painting brush strokes. It gives you the effect of a real-life classical oil painting.
Even though this used to be possible only with Photoshop’s Oil Paint filter when they first released it back in 2016, many websites online have also managed to offer people this filter, meaning you don’t have to download any software to turn your photos into professional style oil paintings!
Below are 5 online tools to apply oil paint filters to your photos for FREE
1. BunnyPic
BunnyPic uses API software from Photopea, which is an online Photoshop editor that uses powerful artificial intelligence for editing and provides stunning results.
BunnyPic has a number of tools that are similar to Photoshop, which includes the Oil Paint filter as well.
To apply the effect on your image:
- Go to BunnyPic
- Click on Open From Computer and select your image
- With the image selected go to Filter > Stylize > Oil Paint
After following the steps you might see a screen pop up in front of you with a number of sliders, each slider varies the effect of the paint.
- Radius – this controls how much the paint spreads on the image
- Cleanliness – this is used to adjust the length of the strokes with lower values having short choppy strokes and higher values having longer fluid strokes
- Scale – this controls the thickness of the paint, lower values will give you a smoother look whereas higher values will give you a more Van Gogh style painting with thick globs.
- Bristle detail – this adjusts the space between the brush hairs. The lower values will give you a softer look while higher values will give you a stronger wavy look.
Below these, you will also notice “lighting” with a check by its side.
This makes the paint strokes stand out, when unchecked the resulting image would be a simple smooth painting.
The lighting can be adjusted further with the given sliders:
- Shine – this adjust the intensity of the light source and how much bounces off of the paint
- Angle – this adjusts the angle of the light source, not be mistaken with the angle of the brush strokes.
BunnyPic is a great versatile tool and is the closest competitor to Adobe Photoshop. It also offers a lot of editing options to further edit your photo.
2. Photofunia
Photofunia oil paint filter has powerful AI to detect the image and turns it into a realistic oil painting.
It is very easy to convert your image into an oil painting, all you have to do is:
- Go to Photofunia – Oil painting
- Click on Choose photo > Upload from PC
- After selecting your photo click on GO
The resulting image will be a realistic painting in which you can clearly see the strokes of the paint and the texture of the canvas. You can download the image in large, medium, and small sizes.
The only downside to using this tool is that you don’t have any options to further edit your photo.
3. Funny.Pho.to
Funny.pho.to is another very easy-to-use tool because of its intuitive interface. It can instantly turn any boring old photo into a nice antique oil painting.
- Go to Funny.pho.to – Antique oil painting
- Upload a photo from your computer
This filter is different from the others listed here as this gives you a more “ancient” look. It has rough edges, a cracked texture, and deep colors with lower saturation which is perfect to give your images that “old school” feel.
You also get 2 basic editing features such as crop and adding text which is enough if you are looking to create some simple pictures for your blog or website.
4. GifGit
GifGit is a great tool to convert pictures into oil paintings and edit them further with their wide range of editing tools.
Not as powerful as BunnyPic, GifGit is also an online photoshop tool that gives you a number of similar options as photoshop.
To apply the oil paint filter to your images using gifgit:
- Go to GifGit – Oil paint filter
- Click on Choose file and upload your image
- Go to Filters > Artistic > Oil paint
Once you followed all the steps correctly, you will notice two options on the top left, radius, and intensity. By adjusting these sliders the effect of the oil paint will show.
- Radius – this slider controls the spread of paint
- Intensity – this controls the effect of oil paint (highlights, colors, strokes etc.)
After adjusting these sliders to your liking, click on download and gifgit will give you options to choose the format, background, and quality of your image.
5. Photofunny
Photofunny is a great tool for converting scenery images into oil paintings due to its unique style.
Photofunny’s style of oil painting is different from the other tools listed as it consists of small splashes of paint with short strokes.
To apply the effect:
- Go to Photofunny – olify
- Click on Upload Photo
- After adding your image, click on next and select the area you want to convert
- Click on Finish
You don’t get many editing options to further adjust the picture compared to the other tools.
The major downside to using this tool is that any image you convert will have a watermark in the bottom right of the image. To remove this you would have to register as a member.
However, this isn’t a big issue if you are planning on using the image for personal use rather than commercial use.
Conclusion
The oil paint filter is great for graphic designers and bloggers who wish to use this on their photos to give it a nice, creative spin.
Bunnypic is the best online tool to convert your plain old images into unique oil paintings due to its versatility and immense editing options. It is the best free alternative to Photoshop, the industry-standard software that first introduced the oil paint filter.
The second best tool is GifGit as it can also give you some control over your designs due to its wide variety of editing tools that are similar to BunnyPic.
Finally, if you just want to have fun and play around with your images you can use any of the software listed above however, for the best image conversion and for commercial intend the best tool to use is BunnyPic.