Drag and drop or click to upload a JPG, PNG, or WEBP file. The oil painting effect is applied immediately at the default settings.
Oil Painting Effect
Transform your photo into a realistic oil painting. Adjust brush radius and colour depth for fine detail or thick, expressive strokes. Free, no signup.
How to Turn a Photo into an Oil Painting
Set Brush Radius from 2 (fine, detailed strokes) to 8 (thick, expressive strokes). Set Colour Depth from 3 (few tones, very painterly) to 8 (rich colour range).
Click Download to save the oil painting as a PNG at the original pixel dimensions.
How the oil painting effect works
The tool uses a Kuwahara filter — a well-known algorithm in computational photography for producing painterly renderings. For every pixel, the filter looks at four overlapping square sub-regions of size radius × radius pixels centred on that pixel. It computes the average colour and the statistical variance (colour uniformity) of each region. The pixel is then assigned the mean colour of the region with the lowest variance — the flattest, most paint-like patch. This naturally creates broad, smooth colour regions separated by sharp boundaries, closely mimicking real oil paint on canvas. A colour quantization step then reduces the image to a limited palette, deepening the painted effect. For large images the filter runs at half resolution for speed, then scales back up with high-quality interpolation.
When to use the oil painting effect
Portrait art — portrait photos take on a classical, gallery-ready appearance. Landscape photography — the filter smooths skies and water into sweeping painted regions. Social media content — a painted avatar or cover photo stands out instantly. Print and home decor — download at full resolution and print on canvas for a convincing oil painting reproduction. Profile pictures and thumbnails — a distinctive artistic look that differs from standard photo filters.