Turn Photos Into Art

I always get a lot of comments when I share art I’ve created on my iPhone with WordFoto. Typographic art is a big thing now, and WordFoto makes it absolutely effortless. Choose a photo and and then the words you want on the photo. Pick from eight preset styles such as Classic Color, Comic, Romance, or Blocky. Or, create your own custom styles by adjusting the shadows, highlights, saturation, brightness, contrast, padding, and fonts. Any way you do it, your results will be very cool.

If you’ve ever wanted to put you and your friends in a comic book, universal app Halftone is the way to do it. Comic book art is a sometimes underrated art form, and Halftone makes it easy to create some of your own. Pick or take a photo, choose your paper style and layout, add speech balloons, stamps and captions, and BLAM!!! KAPOW!!! You’ve got a comic book.

Surreal art gets a twist with iDroste for iPhone/iPod touch. Turn any photo into an artsy spiral. iDroste lets you adjust the number of strands (the number of arms the spiral will have), periods (the number of times your image is repeated on the spiral), and transparency. It’s simple but effective.

AutoPainter is just what it sounds like -- automatically turn your photos into paintings. Simply grab a photo and choose from one of the four offered styles: Aquarell (watercolor), Bensen, Cezanne, or Van Gogh. Your photo will be transformed right before your eyes. iPad fans, check out AutoPainter HD.

Always fancied yourself the next Monet, but you turned out not to have much in the skill department? Never fear, MobileMonet is here to turn any photo into a work of art, though it is really more cartoon-like than impressionist. Simply choose or take a photo and the app creates a black and white sketch. Paint (swipe) the desired areas with your finger to bring the photo’s color into the selected areas. The more you swipe, the more color returns. Use the sliders to adjust the vibrance, brightness, colors, softness, and Monochrome. For iPad users, there is MobileMonet HD.

For those who like a bit more control over their cartoon art, there is ToonPAINT for iPhone/iPod touch. Choose a photo, and the app turns it into a black and white line drawing. Now, you paint it, like a coloring book. Choose the paint colors you like and paint them with your finger. You can zoom in to get better precision. It does take some practice and skill to get your results looking sharp.

This is a fun iPhone/iPod touch app, no artistic talent required. Much like Percolator, you simply choose a photo, choose your parameters (tile border, tile bump, iterations, and tile size), and the app does the rest. MosaicArtist turns any photo into a really pretty mosaic. It works best on colorful subjects with a plain background.

Inspired by the bubbles on a cup of coffee, this app turns any photo into a bubbly masterpiece. Adjust the “Grind” (size of the bubbles), “Brew” (bubble style), and “Serve” (coloration) for different looks. The end result is something like a mosaic, only made entirely of circles.

Not just another mosaic app, this universal app has a twist. Instead of populating your mosaic with single-color tiles, this app uses your own photos, in miniature, as the mosaic tiles. Choose the number of mosaic tiles, the maximum mosaic size, and whether or not you want automatic color correction. MyPictureMosaic is a lot of fun.

This app is in the same vein as MobileMonet, but you have much more control over the parameters. After choosing your photo, pick a paper texture, such as Canvas, Brick, Cracked Paint, Stone, and more. Next, choose a paint media: Oil Paint, Watercolor, Chalk, Pastel, Airbrush, to name a few. Adjust the brush size and opacity. Then simply paint/swipe over your photo to create a beautiful masterpiece that really looks like it was painted. There is also a separate iPad version.

This little gem lets you turn your photos into cartoons or watercolors. You start with one color combination and paint on another. You can do selective colorization (you know that look, the single red rose upon a black and white background) easily or just create something totally unique and beautiful.