If you thought that all apps that turn photos into “paintings” and “drawings” were total gimmicky junk, you’d be dead right. Applying a “find edges” filter and desaturating the result into grayscale doesn’t make a picture look like you drew it. It looks like you’re a dummy for even using it.
But things have changed: Glaze is an iPad app which actually makes faux paintings that look good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odc9XsABdYE
The first decent fake paint conversion I saw was in Apple’s iPhoto for iOS, where the oil painting filter actually gives a more-than-reasonable result. Then we saw Popsicolor, which makes great watercolors.
The paint processing in Glaze is nothing short of incredible. In a previous life, I painted with oils, and with acrylics, and with pretty much any paint I could get my hands on. I’m also very critical about these things, and I find the effects in Glaze really impressive.
You can scroll through a bunch of example thumbnails and wait a few seconds for the effect to render. Oil, Gouache, acrylic and pastels are rendered with thick or thin brushstroke, and you can also throw some virtual dice for a randomized effect (and save the filter for future use if you like it).
Sharing is done to the usual places, and you can choose to share your recipe along with the picture.
Above you see one of my Instagram photos Glazed. It’s both subtle and convincing. Am I raving? That’s because I haven’t seen anything quite this good before – and the app is well designed to boot. If you have an iPad and any kind of aesthetic values (ie. you hate Comic Sans) then you should go spend $3 on this app right away.
Source: Glaze
Thanks: Gilles!
(CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)
