You may remember Oilist, a iOS app that takes your photos and turns them into paintings. This isn’t your usual lame-o filters app, either. Oilist actually makes images that really do look like they’ve been painted — with brushwork, paint texture, and more.
And now, the developer is working on version 2.0 of this great app, and he wants you to help.
Oilist turns photos into paintings
Oilist v1 is already pretty great, and you can check it out today for just $3. The next version, the beta that the developer Jeshua Lacock wants Cult of Mac readers to help test, will add a slew of new features. Here are some of the highlights:
- Live style previews
- Much higher resolution brush work and a new detail brush pass
- Includes over 40 all new styles; each a neural network trained to different artwork
- Every neural network style has three levels of abstraction to choose from
- Brush strokes now flow with the objects being painted (vs pseudo-random waves before)
- Painting now emerges from chaos and no longer first fills detected faces out
- Painting speed preference, improved manual gravity control and refined brushes
A process, not a filter
Photo: Cult of Mac
In use, the new app is quite hypnotic. First, select an image. Then, use the new previews to get an idea of which filter you’d like to use. Then, you can get interactive. Oilist paints forever, and only stop when you pick another photos, or stop the app. The idea is that you watch it, and when you see a result you like, you hit save to save a copy of the image as it looks right now.
This also means that you can affect the painting process. You can, for instance, change the brush while painting, you can set the mood, and you can now add chaos, and any number of other parameters. The list is very long, and it’s a lot of fun to explore
If you’re up for helping out, then head over to the Oilist 2.0 sign-up page and, well, sign up. If you do, Jeshua promises to give you a free copy when the app ships, which is a pretty good deal.
