AKVIS OilPaint: Turn a Photo Into an Oil Painting With Real-Looking Brush Strokes
AKVIS OilPaint is a Windows, macOS and Linux program that converts photos into oil paintings by laying down brush strokes the way a painter would, for hobbyists and designers who want a painted portrait or landscape without picking up a brush. The Home license costs $69 once; the full feature set is in Home Deluxe at $89.
Most "oil paint" filters smear a photo and call it art. OilPaint builds the picture from individual strokes, and you can watch it paint the image stroke by stroke in the After tab. The settings decide how loose or detailed it gets, from a near-photorealistic portrait to rough, impressionist brushwork.
Quick facts
- Version: 11.1
- Developer: AKVIS
- Platforms: Windows 7-11 (32/64-bit), macOS 10.12 to macOS 27 (Intel and M1), Linux 64-bit (standalone only)
- Editions: standalone app, or a plugin for AliveColors, Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Corel PaintShop Pro and other editors
- Price: $69 Home (plugin or standalone), $89 Home Deluxe, $129 Business, all one-time
- License: never expires, covers 2 computers
- Trial: 10 days, all features, no registration
- What we checked: the license comparison table and tutorials on the vendor site, the 64-bit Windows installer on the download server (60 MB, file dated April 15, 2026), and the price of all four licenses on the order page on November 8, 2026. We didn't install the program or paint our own photos
Before you buy
The $69 Home license is the basic oil effect only. The Artistic Edge effect (messy hand-painted borders), the Abstract Art tab, the Stroke Direction tool, the post-processing brushes (History Brush, Smudge, Oil Brush, 3D Brush) and picking a frame from the Timeline all need Home Deluxe ($89) or Business ($129). Many of the vendor's sample paintings use those features.
Home Standalone and Home Plugin each give you one edition, not both, and the Home licenses are for personal use only. Selling the paintings or using them for clients needs Business.
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Overview
OilPaint has three ways in. Presets view shows the presets as a gallery of thumbnails of your own photo. Express shows a handful of sliders (Simplicity, Expression, Stroke Thickness, Max Stroke Length, Hair Thickness, Brush Density). Advanced opens everything: the Painting tab with its Image, Strokes and Edge settings, the Abstract Art tab and the Decoration tab for canvas, text and frames.
A quick-preview square shows the effect on part of the photo as you adjust, and Run paints the whole image. Version 11 added options for blending the painting with the original photo, an updated library of canvas and frame textures, and support for TGA files.
AKVIS OilPaint 11.0 on Windows with the "AKVIS Portrait Close Up" preset, blended 12% with the original photo, and the Image settings on the right.
Features
A brush-stroke engine, not a blur filter
AKVIS OilPaint paints with strokes whose look you control: Simplicity (how much detail survives), Direction, Wide Background Strokes, Expression, Filling, Relief (how raised the paint looks) and Lightening, plus stroke thickness, length and curvature. Random Seed rearranges the strokes for a fresh version with the same settings.
Blend with the original
AKVIS OilPaint can mix the painting back with the source photo by a percentage and a blend mode. A small amount keeps faces recognizable and eyes sharp, while the background stays painterly, which is often what makes a portrait look commissioned rather than filtered.
Artistic Edge and Stroke Direction (Deluxe and Business)
AKVIS OilPaint's Edge settings leave the borders of the painting rough and unfinished, like a canvas where the artist stopped short of the edge. The Stroke Direction tool lets you draw guide lines so the strokes follow a hairline, a wave or a fold of fabric instead of the program's own choice.
A sailing ship with the "AKVIS Oil Canvas Edge" preset, showing the Painting, Abstract Art and Decoration tabs and the Image, Strokes and Edge sub-tabs.
Abstract Art (Deluxe and Business)
AKVIS OilPaint's Abstract Art tab recolors random strokes, shifts the hue, saturation and brightness of the whole picture, and stretches and bends the shapes of objects. It turns a straight oil painting into something closer to modern expressionism, from a light touch to a wild, distorted canvas.
Timeline of the painting process
AKVIS OilPaint saves snapshots while it paints, from a rough underpainting to the finished picture, and you can add your own. On Home Deluxe and Business you can pick any of these stages as the result. On Home, you can still stop the processing early with the Stop button to keep a half-finished look.
Post-processing brushes (Deluxe and Business)
AKVIS OilPaint adds four brushes for finishing by hand: History Brush brings back parts of the photo, Smudge blends paint, Oil Brush paints new strokes, and 3D Brush adds relief. They are how you fix an eye that came out too loose without repainting the whole picture.
Canvas, text, frames and batch processing
AKVIS OilPaint adds a canvas texture, a text or watermark and a frame on every license, and can apply one preset to a folder of photos. It opens TIFF, JPEG, BMP, PNG, WEBP, TGA, RAW and DNG files, and PSD through the plugin, at up to 32 bits per channel.
Express mode on the Mac, with six sliders and the "AKVIS Spicy" preset painting a pagoda on a lake.
Benefits
You get a painted look that holds up when printed large, because the result is made of strokes rather than a smeared copy of the pixels. Presets get you a good start in a click, and the sliders and brushes let you push a picture toward your own style. For a gift, a book cover or a wall print, that is the difference between "nice filter" and "who painted that?"
Real-World Uses
- Gift portraits: turn a family or pet photo into a canvas print, with a frame added in the program.
- Flattering portraits: one Mac user group reviewer liked that painting hides "all the wrinkles and gray hairs" high-resolution cameras show.
- Book and eBook covers: give a cover photo an illustrated, painted feel.
- Travel albums: batch-paint a set of landscapes in one matching style.
- Digital art: start from a photo, then use Abstract Art and the brushes to build something expressive.
Who It's For, and Who Should Skip It
AKVIS OilPaint suits photographers and hobbyists who want painted versions of their photos often, and Photoshop users who want the effect as a plugin on a layer. If you plan to use it seriously, budget for Home Deluxe.
Skip it if you only need one or two paintings: at $69 to $89, a one-off is cheaper from an online service. Skip it if you want to paint from scratch with a digital brush, because this is a photo converter, not a painting app like Corel Painter. And if you want pencil, watercolor or pastel looks, AKVIS sells those as separate programs.
Usage Guide
- Download the installer and run it. On Windows it installs both the standalone app and the plugin. On a Mac they are two separate downloads.
- Open a photo in the standalone app, or start OilPaint from your editor's filter menu. In the standalone app, crop first if needed: Crop works on the original before painting.
- Open the Presets view and click through the thumbnails of your own photo.
- Switch to Express or Advanced and adjust the sliders while watching the preview square.
- Press Run and watch the painting build up. Stop early if you like a looser stage.
- Add canvas, text or a frame on the Decoration tab, then save. During the trial, try the Deluxe tools so you know whether you need them.
Where it falls short
- Price for one effect. At $69 for the basic Home license, OilPaint is among the pricier AKVIS single-effect programs, and Tech World already called it "expensive" in 2015, when it cost less.
- The interface takes learning. Tech World found it "occasionally confusing", and The Next Web said the stroke direction tool "could be more intuitive".
- Touch-ups cost extra. Fixing a detail by hand needs the post-processing brushes, and those are Home Deluxe and Business only. On Home, your only tools are the sliders, the blend with the original and running it again.
- Edition gaps. The standalone app can't open PSD files, the plugin has no Crop tool, and the Linux version is standalone only.
What Users Say
AKVIS OilPaint has been reviewed widely since version 1.0 in 2013, mostly by tech sites, Mac user groups and photography blogs. We found no ratings for it on the large user-review sites, and most of the reviews below cover older versions, so the version is noted with each one.
Tech sites
"Its interface is occasionally confusing, but AKVIS OilPaint is vastly configurable and the program gives a vast amount of control over your finished artwork. It's expensive ($49-$89), but if you only want to convert one or two images then we'd try it anyway." Mike Williams, Tech World, July 2015 (version 4.0)
"If you want to make oil paintings out of your photos, Akvis OilPaint 1.0 is a fine choice. It's fairly swift, very stable, and easy to learn and use." Jackie Dove, The Next Web, February 2014 (version 1.0)
Dove listed the cons as an inflexible text tool, a stroke direction tool that "could be more intuitive", and no side-by-side preview. She also said it isn't a match for professional painting software like Painter, but that photo enthusiasts would likely find its capabilities and pricing reasonable.
"All in all, AKVIS OilPaint can help all users make the most of their photographs even if they have little or no artistic skills, as their oil paintings will be admired by everyone." Giorgiana Arghire, Softpedia, March 2019
User groups and blogs
"High resolution cameras show all the wrinkles and gray hairs and turning these shots into artworks can make them look way better." Linda Cameron, Mid Columbia Macintosh Users Group, September 2015
"Conversion is so realistic but there are and other required qualities: fast rendering, simple to use and I must mention that in introduction: non-destructive Crop tool in standalone version." Bojan Živković, DESIGNEASY, December 2013
"I love how easy the OilPaint program is to use. There is also a mix slider in OilPaint that mixes the brush strokes with the original image to smooth the oil effect." Trista Anderson, Andersons Angels, July 2014
The themes are consistent across a decade of versions: reviewers praise how realistic the strokes look, the amount of control and the ease of getting started with presets. The complaints are the price and an interface with many settings that takes some learning.
Editions and Pricing
| License | Price at checkout | Edition | Use | What you get |
|---|
| Home Standalone | $69 | Standalone app only | Personal, non-commercial | Oil effect, decoration, batch, Crop, no PSD |
| Home Plugin | $69 | Plugin only | Personal, non-commercial | Oil effect, decoration, batch, PSD, no Crop |
| Home Deluxe | $89 | Plugin and standalone | Personal, non-commercial | Adds Edge, Abstract Art, Stroke Direction, brushes |
| Business | $129 | Plugin and standalone | Commercial use allowed | Everything in Deluxe |
Buy Home Standalone ($69)Buy Home Plugin ($69)Buy Home Deluxe ($89)Buy Business ($129)
FAQs
Is AKVIS OilPaint a subscription?
No. AKVIS OilPaint is a one-time purchase and the license never expires. Updates are free for 12 months; after that, a newer version costs $19.95, or $49.95 to update all your AKVIS programs.
Can I upgrade AKVIS OilPaint Home to Home Deluxe later?
Yes. AKVIS charges the difference: $20 from Home to Home Deluxe, $60 from Home to Business, and $40 from Home Deluxe to Business.
Can AKVIS OilPaint process video?
No. AKVIS OilPaint works on still images. AKVIS sells a separate OilPaint Video plugin for After Effects and Premiere Pro, with its own license.
Does AKVIS OilPaint run on Apple Silicon Macs?
Yes. AKVIS OilPaint supports Intel and M1 Macs on macOS 10.12 Sierra through macOS 27, and still runs on 32-bit Windows 7.
How many computers does an AKVIS OilPaint license cover?
Every AKVIS OilPaint license registers on 2 computers, and the two can run different operating systems.
Can I sell prints made with AKVIS OilPaint?
Only with the Business license. AKVIS OilPaint Home and Home Deluxe are limited to non-commercial personal use.
System Requirements
- Windows: Windows 7-11, 32 or 64-bit. Minimum Pentium IV and 4 GB RAM, recommended Core i5 and 8 GB RAM.
- macOS: 10.12 Sierra to macOS 27, 64-bit. Minimum Intel and 4 GB RAM, recommended Intel or M1 and 8 GB RAM.
- Linux: 64-bit Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat, CentOS, Fedora or openSUSE, standalone only. Minimum Core i3 and 8 GB RAM, recommended Core i5 and 16 GB RAM.
- Plugin: needs a photo editor that supports plugins.
Conclusion
AKVIS OilPaint is one of the more convincing photo-to-oil converters, because it paints with real strokes you can steer, and reviewers have said so for a decade. It is worth it if you will paint photos regularly, and Home Deluxe at $89 is the version to buy, since the edge effect, abstract mode and finishing brushes are where the best results come from. The main reason not to buy is cost: $69 for the basic license is a lot for one or two pictures. Paint a few of your own photos during the 10-day trial and decide from those.
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