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Picture to Painting Converter 1.0 Giveaway
$49.99
EXPIRED

Giveaway of the day — Picture to Painting Converter 1.0

Transform ordinary pictures into oil paintings in a couple of clicks.
$49.99 EXPIRED
User rating: 200 47 comments

Picture to Painting Converter 1.0 was available as a giveaway on September 27, 2018!

Today Giveaway of the Day
$36.00
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Photo To Painting is a new software tool by SoftOrbits, aimed at transforming ordinary pictures into oil paintings in a couple of clicks, using automatic presets. It has three main options: Oil Painting, Watercolor Drawing and Impressionism. Each preset can be tweaked manually to produce a unique painting. Converting photos to paintings is easy and lightning fast, the results might surprise even the most sophisticated taste!

Purchase an Unlimited personal license (with support and updates) at 70% discount!

System Requirements:

Windows 7/ 8/ 10

Publisher:

SoftOrbits

Homepage:

https://www.softorbits.com/picture-to-painting-converter/

File Size:

15.8 MB

Price:

$49.99

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Developed by CyberLink Corp.
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Developed by Mirillis Ltd.

Comments on Picture to Painting Converter 1.0

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#26

Great program. Happy I downloaded it!

Reply   |   Comment by Morgan Pierce  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-1)
#25

Terrible, kept crashing and when it did work took ages to produce laughable results.

Reply   |   Comment by Peter  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)
#24

This is an OK freebie. Many of the comments seem to be from people who haven't made the effort to figure out how it works (hint. The square box in the middle of your photo is a preview of haw the entire picture will look when converted).
It's a little slow, but there's a lot of math to process FFS, and the longest it's t two minutes to process a 20 megapixel file.

Reply   |   Comment by Arthur ASCII  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#23

The programs that have a pop up window to “get registration key”never works. You click it and then nothing.

Reply   |   Comment by Randall  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-2)

Randall, This program has the registration key right up front during the install!

Reply   |   Comment by Arthur ASCII  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

Arthur ASCII, which does not work. That’s what I am saying.

Reply   |   Comment by Randall  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

Randall, Don't "click" it, simply copy (ctrl + C) then paste (ctrl = V) when asked. Worked fine for me...

Reply   |   Comment by Arthur ASCII  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)
#22

It would be cool to have an 8bf file to use the program like a plugin/filter in PSP etc.

Reply   |   Comment by Hooty  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+4)
#21

took a look at the examples on the home page
each had a <> where you could drag to see more or less of the original photo and conversion.
Where you had a face of girl with skates, now have just a dark blob where eyes were and nose and mouth twisted.
Also lost the face on girl with horse example.
Boat on shore in trees, has way too many swirls. Could have been okay in water but colors overall were so different than original.

Am artist so normally get and try all these types of programs.
Given comments of slowness. Opted to pass today

Reply   |   Comment by CB  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+7)
#20

It uses 3.5 times more memory on my machine than my Photoshop Elements 14 does.
That's rather baffling.

Reply   |   Comment by consuella  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+10)
#19

I almost never comment on these programs but then I download very, very few.

This is a perfect example of a totally unintuitive and unresponsive piece of software.

Uninstalled!

Reply   |   Comment by Murphy  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+12)
#18

Tried the first default oil painting preset. Wow - this is super-slow! After several minutes it was at 40% and I gave up waiting. This is near to unusable.

Reply   |   Comment by M. H.  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+20)

An addition: The used image was a JPG with 4000x3000 pixel size. It was taken in portrait mode but was loaded into the program in landscape mode (for whatever reason). This is also no nice behavior but I could have lived with it, the super-slow processing is a no-go, though.

Reply   |   Comment by M. H.  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)
#17

Looks like it only works on square graphics. That is a handicap. Would like to see it do the whole graphic/photo regardless of shape, such as oblong in width or height.
The effects are awesome. Very cool.

Reply   |   Comment by Hooty  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-3)

Hooty: though I've no wish to be the Help file that this developer has failed to properly compile, no: this program can in fact handle images of different aspect ratios. Refer to my post about Tools/Crop. I agree with your comment though: on initial acquaintance, it certainly appears not to be able deal with anything but the rectangular.

Reply   |   Comment by MikeR  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+9)

Hooty, Here I could work with a not-square picture.
Result:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rilj5yuz1m99s3m/f-WP_20180727_14_23_16_Pro-Aquarel-Standard.jpg

Reply   |   Comment by Ootje  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

MikeR, Oh thank you. I hunted around and cropped one to kind of, to the original shape and it then allowed the effect to cover the whole oblong graphic. Not sure how that worked differently but yes, and thanks for your input. Very much appreciated MikeR .

Reply   |   Comment by Hooty  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

MikeR, your "Post about Tools/Crop" where, exactly? Can you provide a link to it here, please? Thank you.

Reply   |   Comment by Steven R  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)

Hooty, The box you are playing around with is simply a "preview" area (read the help file). The rendering process with convert the entire photo no matter what shape it is!

No need to crop FFS...

Reply   |   Comment by Arthur ASCII  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-1)

Hooty, That is not true. You are looking at the preview area!!!

Reply   |   Comment by Arthur ASCII  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)

Arthur ASCII, Right. this has already been addressed. Thank ya! ;)

Reply   |   Comment by Hooty  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#16

Installed and did got the key easy. There were more offers from this developer, so the mail-adress was already know.
The screen look like some other program from this developer.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/a0p425egfliux0u/Hoofdscherm.png
After setting some filter, it take time to complete the whole picture.:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cwjdx9082tph5ww/Instelling.png
Some, 3 examples:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/yzwjfswzlh174jk/AACbfDCnV3KAxV0GCK1AT1mOa
Ootje

Reply   |   Comment by Ootje  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)
#15

REVIEW:

Picture to Painting Converter 1.0 appears to be a newly launched program from SoftOrbits, the Smolensk, Russia, software developer now in its 12th year of business. The software, however, incorporates a Help file dated 2013, so if Picture to Painting Converter has finally come to market after five years as work-in-progress, a review is timely.

Installation / activation: License key acquisition involves a time-consuming number of stages. They eventually culminate in the compulsory opening of a SoftOrbits account for which the user's name, gender, email address and country of residence are required.

GUI: at program launch, the user is invited to load an image for processing. The GUI then opens. It is uncluttered and resizable. Six option menus feature on the screen-top toolbar with five command options beneath. A Toolbox panel appears at right. It incorporates four options for style selection, default presets, brush shape, and stroke light options, and 10 slider-adjustable controls for processing management. The selected image can be zoomed in / out.

Ease of Use: Users initially confronted by the image overlay of a rectangular crop field must wonder why it's there. The overlay is actually a permanency. It doubles as both a crop selector and content preview screen. Before doing anything else then, the user should go to Tools / Crop and then chose an option. Maintain original aspect ratio is probably the wisest choice to begin with.

Help: how good a software product might be is most often reflected in how good its Help file might be. Developers who care about their product care about their users. Unfortunately, SoftOrbits' approach appears to be one of sublime indifference. No step-by-step walk-through. No video tutorial support. The HTML file is less an explanation of how to use the available tools and the resultant outcomes as a simple recital of the tool names. As what appears to be a Crop Rectangle is the most evident feature to greet a new user, it might be thought that it would be listed in the Help index under 'C'. But instead, 'C' points only (and ironically) to Customer Support.

Functionality: absent meaningful Help, individual evaluation of the program's various components seemed necessary. But the intention was frustrated from the get-go because though the slider controls are fundamental to this software's operation, not one of them is calibrated. Instead of being able to determine a range of percentage settings and save them in-app or memorise for the future, the user is left to blunder along with nothing more sophisticated than a-bit-to-the-left-no-maybe-a-bit-to-the-right-oh-whoa-hang-on-needs-some-more-to-the-left.

Performance, test 1: A high-quality 57Mb 5472 x 3648 TIF image file. The default crop was changed to maintain original aspect ratio. The change did not complete automatically and it proved necessary to spend time, adjusting the handles to achieve accuracy. The 'Crop' button was then pressed to complete this stage. The 'Next' command at top right looked as though it would usher in the next stage but merely invited the user to 'save changes' otherwise all unsaved changes would be lost. As a change had indeed occurred to the default crop, 'save' was clicked, at which point all processing was abandoned and the program simply opened a different image in the same folder.

The program was closed and re-launched. As before, clicking 'crop' after manual readjustment saw the overlay vanish, this presumably a signal to move to the 'Painting'command. Confusingly, when this was actioned, the crop screen returned, but in unannounced preview guise. Though 5 minutes 35 seconds were then expended, waiting for it to show what the small selected image area would look like post-effect, no such preview occurred. Accordingly, the program was run without that.

As the progress bar is mislocated on the bottom of the GUI, it initially seemed as if nothing was happening. However, when the bar did become apparent, it inched along from left to right for a total of 11 minutes 40 seconds, at which time it stopped and then finally vanished at 18 minutes 5 seconds. The image was not processed. NOTE: this large TIF was not intended to be typical of the kind of images I would expect a budget-priced product like Picture to Painting to easily handle. It was used for stress-test purposes only.

Performance, test 2: The next image was a much more everyday 4Mb jpeg of similar dimension. The program 'cropped' (with manual adjustment) to the requested size and was then run without bothering to devote time to seeing if the preview function would work. Using the oil painting default, processing took 3 minutes 10 seconds. The result was a transformation of a sunlit UK National Park (Lake District)) landscape into a World War 1 battlefield at a very muddy dusk.

It should however be appreciated, as the late James Thurber so eloquently did in regard to marrying a mermaid, that what is one man's mate is another man's poisson. What to one person may look pretty good ain't necessarily going to look like that to someone else. Whether it's SoftOrbits or any other developer, trying to please everyone with a default setting is an impossible task, so I have no criticism of its subjective choices.

Performance, test 3: again, a small (4 MB) jpeg was used, this time to see how long it might take for the preview screen to do its job. Four tests were run. On the first two, the preview overlay actually worked -- though again, took several minutes to do so. On the second two, the program gave up, reporting in both instances: Error in fx brushify local. . . failed to allocate memory for image.

Performance, test 4: this time, a 7MB jpeg landscape was used to test the slider effects. Absent any calibration, it proved impossible to fathom out what combination of what controls at what unknown percentage settings would achieve an acceptable outcome. The result was frequently either an unfocused watercolor when it should've been an oil painting, or an oil painting executed by Van Gogh when feeling especially suicidal.

Comparators: two were used for this test, the best of all online image editors: Lunapix:

https://www241.lunapic.com/editor

and David Thoiron's deservedly classic freeware program, Fotosketcher:

https://fotosketcher.com

The same 7Mb jpeg was used. Lunapic online transformed the image to appealing effect in less than 5 minutes. FotoSketcher, a decidedly more comprehensive desktop program, took 8 minutes.

Verdict: today's developer has a GOTD track record remarkable for the sheer volume of thumbs-up votes consistently awarded its products regardless of however critical the comment threads might be. In the past 12 months alone, SoftOrbits' products have frequently achieved 80% approval ratings with vote totals of anything up to 273 -- far, far beyond the level of approval attracted by other developers, including well-known names.

That this phenomenon may leave some feeling a little. . .uncomfortable is in no way assuaged by SoftOrbits' current website claim to being an Intel Software Partner. I have some acquaintance with Intel, so have noted that nowhere within Intel's worldwide register of 2,630 approved businesses does SoftOrbits name appear.

Assuming that some kind of mistake has occurred in Intel's record keeping, and also assuming the authenticity of all those positive votes this developer repeatedly attracts on GOTD, one might reasonably expect Picture to Painting Converter 1.0 to be representative of SoftOrbits' pedigree and prowess, and thus to be exceptional in all respects. Indeed it is. Exceptionally awful.

Far from it living up to the developer claims on this page of being "easy and lightning fast" to use, capable of transforming n ordinary photo into a painting in a couple of clicks, today's Photo to Painting Converter showed itself on test to be inept, intuitive, unreliable, and very obviously, under-developed.

Uninstalled -- though I will, of course, watch how the votes go today, if only to see how wrong I am. Evidence of such is mounting with noticeable speed: 15 hours still to go at this time of writing, and already SoftOrbits has 113 favorable votes, and 81% approval.

Reply   |   Comment by MikeR  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+7)
#14

Installed without any problem. This is a very basic drawing-painting program. Not too many tools to work with. The best one is watercolor Abstract, all others are so-so.

Also, it is very, very (very) slow! It takes forever to render a simple 1650 x 1080 pixels picture. I'm doing one while I write this, and it's still not rendered! It usually takes about 4-5 minutes to render a basic picture. I can't imagine a larger format! And I have a very fast computer i7, 4 cores, 16Gb RAM, etc.

Well, I'm still waiting for my picture... la, la, la, la, (signing while waiting...)

Check out Fotosketcher instead... more goodies, more drawing/ painting tools and tons of features... all for FREE!

Geez, still not rendered... my goodness! Who's that virtual painter behind all this?! Still counting... can you hear the Jeopardy song? ta-da-da dada da da....
Well, after more than 7-8 minutes I have to stop it... Earlier tests were done in about 5 minutes.

Fotosketcher does much better renderings in 40-50 seconds!

Anyway, good try, but it won't stay on my computer... sorry Softorbits, but your programmer should return back to programming school ;-)

Reply   |   Comment by JimK  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+6)
#13

I tried the product, the finished product looked terrible.

Reply   |   Comment by Allen Lewis  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#12

In order to review any new graphics program, I would use a disc cleaner to remove temp files taking up space. Also choose a small image to test. I chose 900 x 600 and it worked fine. I have a number of image editors and the result was similar to some of these but it was still quite nice. I did run into one problem, the RUN arrow to process the image kept disappearing. I found out how to get it back with 'Show Status' in the menu.
I would like to reply to all the negative comments. The program works and it is your choice if you want to keep it or not. I like it and will keep it.

Reply   |   Comment by Carole  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+6)

I agree, I would try it with larger images and the small image was not from Facebook. I have a folder of images taken with a camera and resized for the purpose of testing graphic software. These will obviously be processed much faster and I can try out styles before using larger images. Working with larger images will probably use up all my resources so I will have to wait till I am not using my laptop for anything else. When I say it works, I mean it will process a small image from start to finish, allowing for bugs

Reply   |   Comment by Carole  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)
#11

Installing, registering and starting the program worked fine. I put a photo in it, tried to get an effect but nothing happened. Then it crashed. I tried several times. It's crap don't bother!

Reply   |   Comment by Johnny Doe  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+21)
#10

Tried it on a picture I took with my DSLR. It's a 24mp photo. I got a "Failed to Allocate Memory" error message.

Reply   |   Comment by Will  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+18)
#9

Okay, I dragged a photo to the 'drag here' spot. How do I get a painting? What do I press?

Reply   |   Comment by Dean  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-2)

Dean, the Start button is at the bottom of the toolbox. You can enlarge the box if you don't see that button.

Reply   |   Comment by ouialaraison  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)

Dean, I'm with you. After you enlarge th crop lines (very, very slow and difficult to do), then what? Nothing happens. Isn't there something to press?

Reply   |   Comment by Eileen Melamed  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)
#8

Installed and registered with relative ease .win 10.
I tried single image 2200 x 2200 took a while but pleasing result.
Was interested in batch file conversion,i hope to test such and report back.

Reply   |   Comment by captain drewi  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-3)

Tried batch conversion..it doesn't work.Also the prog defaults to selecting a very small area rather than automatically selecting the complete image...verdict total bobbins.

Reply   |   Comment by captain drewi  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#7

I looked at the options and did not find a way to turn off auto updates. Many SoftOrbits offerings become unregistered over even short periods of time and I thought that maybe auto update was the reason... Any ideas are appreciated!

Reply   |   Comment by Exploro  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)
#6

Installed and did got the key easy. There were more offers from this developer, so the mail-adress was already know.
The screen look like some other program from this developer.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/a0p425egfliux0u/Hoofdscherm.png
After setting some filter, it take time to complete the whole picture.:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cwjdx9082tph5ww/Instelling.png
Some, 3 examples:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/yzwjfswzlh174jk/AACbfDCnV3KAxV0GCK1AT1mOa
Ootje

Reply   |   Comment by Ootje  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+3)
#5

Just a friendly PSA: Please remember that GotD is communicating with hundreds of companies each year to give us FREE software. Some are awesome, some not so much, but please try to be kind.

Maybe if we offer more positive reinforcement and encouragement to developers...and each other, software developers will see GotD as a more positive and opportunistic platform and we'll get better and better software. Personally, I don't have a need for this software, but hopefully some of you do and enjoy it. And no, I'm not a shill, nor am I affiliated with GotD or SoftOrbits...just trying to be a little optimistic and offer some insight.

Reply   |   Comment by KK  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+120)
#4

It looks like an advanced version of the MS office word 2016 Artistic Effects button , it's very similar to this tool yet it's more advanced in it's technical artistic details . it's also more faster due to it's lower usage of CPU and Ram unlike MS office 2016 and it's ultra easy to use due to it's stand alone nature .

As Most Programs here it says that No technical support and No free upgrades to Future versions and strictly for non commercial usage .

Reply   |   Comment by Ali  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+10)
#3

Work nice on my 7SP1, but it did run into error mode (no crash) and I had to reload the image.
I hate their model picture they put for settings preview. I think a nature image would be better.

Reply   |   Comment by adid  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+5)
#2

This program seems to hang intermittently. This leads me to believe that the program is using unnecessary resources. Bare minimum, it is acting suspiciously? Furthermore I cannot seem to register the program. I get a popup telling me that there is an error whilst trying to connect to activation server. This happens even if I disable firewall completely! However, if I click on the popup offering the program at a 70% discount my browser opens INSTANTLY to take me to their shopping cart..lol.
I will be uninstalling. Had problems in the past with Softorbits Software, so I shall not bother installing ANY of their software in future, free or not!!

Reply   |   Comment by Duane Bowerscott  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+48)
#1

Review system is pointless if they remove any dislike of the software. I find this software pointless myself not being rude about it but pretty much any photo editing software offers this feature yet this is a stand alone program.

This is why I do not see a point in this software it is a basic feature of many programs yet this is the only purpose for this program and comes off as bloatware because of it. Like a calculator that is 4 different programs (one each for Plus, Minus, Multiple, and divide).

Reply   |   Comment by Clinton  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-1)

Clinton,

"... but pretty much any photo editing software offers this feature... "

Actually it doesn't come built into Photoshop or PaintShop Pro or the GIMP. Google and you get lots of apps, but for phones rather than Windows software, which makes sense I guess, because most photos nowadays are taken with cell phones. I do think SoftOrbits *might* increase sales of their Picture to Painting Converter if they included a plug-in, e.g. like many Franzis apps, because that would better integrate with other editing tasks.

Reply   |   Comment by mike  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+14)

mike,
do you really know Photoshop CC latest version that well enough to be so emphatic?

Reply   |   Comment by Sigrid.DE  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)

Clinton, Every day there's a giveaway. If it's not your bag, wait until tomorrow - there might be something more to your liking.

Reply   |   Comment by Arthur ASCII  –  5 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-1)
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