Apple’s App Store recently promoted photography applications at discounted prices. While browsing the store, most of the apps seemed very typical, like a Photoshop editing app or something that simply adds a filter to your photo.

Then I saw it.

Waterlogue.

The icon has a whale under an umbrella and I don’t know why but that alone caught my interest.

The idea seems simple: take a photo and turn it into a painting. As someone who is not very skilled at painting, this idea sounds great. I started by uploading a basic landscape photo I had taken. While it begins processing, we are able to watch it being sketched and painted before your eyes and the final result was very impressive!

Here’s a side by side comparison of one of my photos:

I soon found myself going through my photo library to see how each photo would turn out. You are given a few options on how the app paints, such as the style of painting (which is similar to filters), size of the canvas (which controls how much detail) and how much “paint” is used. Each photo comes out great and unique.

It is currently available for iPhone and iPad and I highly recommend it!

iTunes: Waterlogue – Tinrocket, LLC