Featured Resource – Pic-to-Painting

Pic-to-Painting is a new plugin available starting with PaintShop Pro 2019. It is free and can generate some very interesting results from any photo, whether they are particularly great to start with, or maybe not that great!

Get Pic-to-Painting

This plugin is available from the Home page of PaintShop Pro. Simply click on the Home icon on top of your screen to access that page.

Navigate to the Get More tab on the left, choose the Applications tab, and scroll until you get to the Pic-to-Painting resource.

Click the Download button on the right and then, on the new screen, click the green INSTALL button and follow the prompts.

Using Pic-to-Painting

The plugin will work just like any other plugin in PaintShop Pro. It will appear in the Effects menu, and you can use it directly inside your program.

Open the image you want to use. I will be using this image from Aleksandr Eremin.

Navigate to the Effects menu, and at the bottom, you will see the list of plugins, including PicToPainting.

The plugin will then open with your image in the main pane and a few other sections. They are numbered so the process is quite simple.

Scroll at the bottom to find the Paint Style you would want to replicate and click on it.

Below the top-right pane, is a Preview Style button. Click on it to turn the image in the large pane into that specific effect you selected.

By default, the Strength will be set to the maximum, but you can change that if you want something more subtle.

Once you are happy, click on the Confirm Painting button.

Finally, your image will appear in your PaintShop Pro so you can continue your work.

Other effects

There are other effects you can create with Pic-to-Painting and it is up to you to determine which one is the most appropriate for the image you are using and also your own preferences. Here are a couple of other effects that could be generated with Pic-to-Painting using the same image.

As you can see, the results are very different.

It is not working for me

Unfortunately, Pic-to-Painting is meant to work correctly with Windows 10. This means that although it MIGHT work with Windows 7, it is more likely not to work.

I have PaintShop Pro and Pic-to-Painting installed on two different Windows 7 machines, and on one of them it works and on the other, it does not. Of course, since the plugin is free, you can still give it a try on a Windows 7 machine. Just beware that it might not work as intended and if that is the case, it is to be expected.

Another issue that might arise, especially if you are still using a monitor with a lower resolution is the fact that the last button to click (Save and Close) might not be visible. If that is the case, it is hidden behind the list of Paint Styles. If that is your case, just activate a button above that (like the Preview Style button) and use the Tab key on your keyboard to navigate to the next button. You might see a tiny bit of that button when it is highlighted behind the Paint Styles. At that point, simply hit Return and it will have the same effect as if you had clicked on it.