PhotoRiyaHow to make an oil painting from a photo
Drop your photo onto the box above and the painting appears immediately. Brush or line size controls the size of the dabs: small brushes keep detail, large brushes give a bold, abstract look. Strength sets how many tones are kept, so lower values look flatter and more graphic. Add canvas grain for texture, and press Download.
Landscapes, portraits shot from a distance and still lifes work especially well, because the filter simplifies detail into patches of colour.
How the oil painting filter works
This is the classic oil-paint effect found in many photo editors. Around every pixel it looks at a small square of neighbours, groups them by brightness, and paints the pixel with the average colour of the most common brightness group. Large uniform areas become smooth patches, while edges between light and dark stay crisp, which is what gives the impression of brush strokes.
The effect has no AI in it, so nothing is invented. Every colour in the result comes from your photo.
Getting a more painterly result
Use a bigger brush on a large, detailed photo, because the brush size is relative to the picture, and raise the strength for richer tones. Photos that are slightly soft, or have lots of colour variation, turn out best. For line drawings, use photo to sketch, and for a flat illustration look try photo to cartoon.
Questions people ask
How do I turn a photo into an oil painting?
Drop your photo onto the tool above. The oil painting effect is applied at once. Adjust the brush size and strength to taste, then press Download.
Can I control the brush size?
Yes. The Brush or line size slider goes from 1 to 10. Small values keep fine detail and large values give big, bold dabs.
Why does my painting look darker than the photo?
The filter picks the most common brightness in each patch, which favours large areas. In a dark photo, that is the darkness. Brighten the photo first, or choose a lighter version, for a livelier painting.
Does it work on portraits?
Yes, but the filter simplifies detail everywhere, including faces, so portraits look best when the face is not too large in the frame, or with a small brush size.
Is my photo uploaded to a server?
No. The effect is made inside your browser tab, on your own device, and nothing is sent anywhere. That also makes it instant: there's no waiting for an upload or a queue.
Is this AI?
No. It uses classic image-processing techniques, so the result is predictable, private and made in seconds on your device. It does not generate new content or restyle faces the way AI apps do.
What size is the result?
The picture is processed at up to 2,200 pixels on its long side, which is plenty for sharing and for A4 prints at about 200 DPI. Smaller photos keep their size.
Is it free?
Yes. There is no limit, no watermark and no account. PhotoRiya is open source under the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses.
More free tools
- Photo to sketch converter pencil, charcoal and inkTurn a photo into a pencil sketch, colour pencil, charcoal or ink drawing.
- Photo to cartoon converter flat colours, bold outlinesTurn a photo into a cartoon with flat colours and bold outlines.
- Color palette from image with HEX codes in a clickExtract the dominant colors of an image as HEX, RGB and HSL, with CSS and JSON export.