Now That iPhoto Is Full, What Can You Do To Turn Boring Photos Into Artwork

My Mac must have a dozen or so photo enhancements apps that go a few steps (or, in some cases, only a single step) beyond iPhoto’s limited filters and effects. Why?

With tens of thousands of mostly vanilla photos buried in my iPhoto collection, you can just never have enough tools to turn boring into artwork. My latest find is a Mac app which costs little, yet delivers more oohs and aahs than any other.

One Click Portraits

For what can only be described as the narcissism gene in action, almost everyone wants to see a closeup portrait photo. What they don’t want to see in their own portrait are flaws, of course.

Enter Portrait Painter, the little Mac app that takes a portrait photo– any boring, vanilla, unremarkable photo will do– and turns it into a work of art.

What kind of art? Think painting. Think wedding photo quality applied to any basic photo.

Portrait Painter seems to apply a painting-like effect to photos, which turns unremarkably plain photos into something visually attractive.

It adds light, color, texture, and they all seem to converge to turn the photo into what seems like an oil painting without the requirement to guess who the subject might be.

Some of the sample images are cartoonish, while others look more like artwork.

Portrait Painter can smooth out skin blemishes, freckles, wrinkles, pimples and more with presets or using the built-in tools.

Every photo is different, of course. Some are instantly transformed into classics, while others may resemble more classic cartoon images.

Not bad, right?

You choose which color palette to use on each photo– from soft and natural, to overly saturated and bright.

Select which brushes to use– size, length, bristle strength, and canvas strength. The larger the photo, the better.

The many presets are a good place to start, but customization of each component makes for better results (and can be saved as presets).

Photos are part of our social lives these days and Portrait Painter keeps it social with options to post to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr (plus email and print).

Portraits can be saved as high quality TIF images, or more standard .jpg and .png files. And, it doesn’t much matter the type of photo used. Closeup portraits are fine, of course, but so are macro photos, scenic images, and almost anything else.

While the effects are many, they are somewhat limited to that dreamy, wedding photo, painting look, but considering the small price, it’s a useful tool to dress up photos that are usually boring.

The Apple Villagers

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