MOSSEL BAY NEWS - People have tremendous fun, converting photographs into "paintings" or "drawings", using editing programs.

These can be used on one's cellphone and a photograph can be converted in seconds.

A few years ago Snapchat was the rage and people put rabbit ears on faces, added interesting spectacles, hearts, flowers, glitter and all sorts of enhancements to photographs. Anyone could be transformed into a prince or princess, using the fun cellphone program.

Now it is not as popular as it was when the program was first introduced.
Some of the programs people use simply come with their phone, such as Galaxy Enhance-X on Samsung cellphones.

Freelance photographer for Mossel Bay Advertiser, Julian Scholtz, uses Galaxy Enhance-X to convert photographs to "paintings" and Snapseed to change the borders of his photographs. 

He has both programs on his cellphone. He used one of his converted photographs of himself as his WhatsApp profile picture.

Scholtz has an IT job and he works part-time as a professional photographer.

Commissions

One wonders if the photo editing programs are making certain types of artists redundant. There are artists who take commissions and paint portraits of people, based on photographs of them. Many artists have spent months, painstakingly copying photographs and giving them a "painterly" feel.

Now you can convert a photo to a painting in seconds and print it on good quality paper or canvas. The only thing missing is the thick, three-dimensional paint one sees on an artist's canvas.

The edited photograph of the flower.Mossel Bay Advertiser asked well-known local art teacher Karli Stamhuis what she thought about converting photographs into paintings. Several of her students paint from photographs.

Stamhuis notes: "It depends on your focus and also on the specific artwork. If the process of creating art is important to you, you might be interested in working on the composition, analysing and mixing the right colours and working on the process until you are satisfied with the end product."
On this point, the application of the paint, the thickness and the texture, could also be important to the artist.

Therapeutic

Stamhuis continues: "This process can be highly therapeutic and satisfying, because you are extremely involved in it. It can also be frustrating."
Problem solving is always frustrating at times, yet it is absorbing and one feels satisfied if one overcomes the challenges.

Stamhuis points out: "If the outcome is more important, these Apps can help you tremendously to get you through this process much more quickly and easily and they can still be satisfying. One can combine different works of art into one, using different functions and add filters, also creating a unique piece of art. Here also, there is a process involved and it's satisfying.

"But if your focus is entirely on the outcome and you are just adding different filters and printing 1, 2, 3 and 4 prints, that could be predictable and lean more towards skill in picture editing and not in art."

But are the realists who paint from photographs for commissions now redundant? Mossel Bay Advertiser believes the answer is no. People will always want original works of art, where they can see the paint texture, appreciate the mix of colours, the skill and time involved, and be satisfied it is an original - from the artist's hand.

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