With the right smartphone app, it’s never been easier to turn photos into sketches, drawings, and paintings. You don’t need complicated software and you don’t need to draw. The app does the work, and most of them do it in a single tap.
All the apps in this article turn photos into sketches without much fuss. We have apps for Android smartphones and iPhones, and every one of them is free to download. Several keep their best filters behind ads or an in-app purchase, and we say which ones in each entry.
Our top pick is Prisma. It carries more than 500 art filters, adds a new one every day, and runs on both iOS and Android. Nothing else here gives you as many ways to turn a photo into a sketch.
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9 Best Apps to Turn Photos into Sketches
Let’s take a look at the best apps in detail. Android and iOS smartphones are both covered, and there’s an app here for every skill level.
Pick by the result you want. For the widest choice of art styles, go for Prisma or ToonMe. For a pencil sketch and nothing else to think about, Photo Sketch Maker and Pencil Photo Sketch are the simplest. For watercolor and paint effects, use Watercolor Effects & Filters or Photo Paint. For comic and manga styles on an iPhone, Clip2Comic is the specialist. And if you want AI to do more than drop a filter on your photo, look at MyEdit or Canva.
1. Prisma
| Brand |
Brand
Prisma Labs
|
| Supported Devices |
Supported Devices
iOS and Android
|
| Price |
Price
Free with in-app purchases
|
| User Rating |
User Rating
4.5*
|
| No. of Downloads |
No. of Downloads
50M+
|
| Key Features |
Key Features
500+ art filters and effects, a new art filter every day, editing tools, background blur tools
|
Prisma is one of the best photo editing art apps there is. It’s free to download for iOS and Android systems. The app is also packed with fantastic features for turning photos into works of art. That includes features for turning photos into sketches and drawings.
With over 500 art filters, you’ll have no shortage of options when transforming images into sketches or paintings. Prisma Labs releases a new filter every single day, so the library you open next month isn’t the one you opened today.
You have a wide range of art styles to choose from. You have classic pencil and pen sketches. But you can also choose anime or comic book styles. You can also try pop art or futuristic art filters for something unique.
The background removal tool simplifies the job of changing a photo’s background. This used to be a tricky operation, but not anymore. It’s easy to add a new arty background to any selfie or group shot.
The app also has editing tools for better creative control. All the filters and effects are quick to apply, but you can do more detailed work using the editing tools. You can adjust everything, like exposure, sharpness, contrast, and brightness.
It’s a great app for enhancing selfies. As well as the other editing tools, it has specialist face and skin editing tools for more eye-catching self-portraits. It can smooth skin and reduce blemishes, giving you a smoother, more pleasing finish.
Prisma isn’t for everyone. The free version carries ads, and the app pushes you toward a Premium subscription for the newest filters. If all you want is a plain pencil sketch, a smaller app like Photo Sketch Maker gets you there in fewer taps.
2. ToonMe
| Brand |
Brand
Informe Laboratories
|
| Supported Devices |
Supported Devices
iOS and Android
|
| Price |
Price
Free with in-app purchases
|
| User Rating |
User Rating
4.4*
|
| No. of Downloads |
No. of Downloads
100M+
|
| Key Features |
Key Features
Hundreds of art filters, AI portrait tools, background remover, social media integration
|
ToonMe is one of the most popular art filter apps right now, with millions of users all over the world. It’ll turn any photo into a sketch, but that’s not the limit of its powers. The art filters transform images that’ll impress your friends on social media.
You can import any photo from your camera roll or social media accounts. And once imported, the transformation can begin thanks to quick-apply filters and effects.
The app gives you hundreds of options, with dozens of art styles to choose from. Of course, you can start by turning a photo into a sketch. But you can also try cartoon styles or more traditional art style filters.
ToonMe also helps you remove background without needing more complicated photo editing software. You can then replace the background with one from the app’s extensive library.
You can also use the app to make more subtle edits to your selfies and profile pics. There are beauty filters that remove blemishes and imperfections. Or you can add a vintage look to your photo to add an old Hollywood aesthetic.
Social media integration makes it easy to share your artistic creations across different platforms quickly and easily. Whether you’re trying to make a splash on Instagram, Facebook, or X, ToonMe can help attract new followers and friends.
ToonMe is built around faces. Its best templates are portrait and cartoon styles, so a landscape or a still life gets far less out of it than a selfie does. It’s also ad-supported, and the Android version rates lower than the iPhone one at 4.4 stars against 4.7.
3. Photo Sketch Maker
| Brand |
Brand
Aero Tools
|
| Supported Devices |
Supported Devices
Android
|
| Price |
Price
Free with in-app purchases
|
| User Rating |
User Rating
4.0*
|
| No. of Downloads |
No. of Downloads
10M+
|
| Key Features |
Key Features
Variety of sketch styles, in-app camera, freestyle drawing with pencil tools
|
Photo Sketch Maker is a simple yet effective app. It doesn’t have the wide or advanced tool sets of the previous apps, but it’s a sure choice if you want to turn a photo into a sketch. It’s only available for Android smartphones, but it’s free and doesn’t take up much memory.
You have several sketch styles to choose from. There are pencil and hard pencil sketch styles. You also have watercolor and other paint effects. Pen and ink sketch styles give you even more choice when creating a sketch from a photo.
The app also has a pencil tool for free drawing. You can draw on unedited images, or you can add more pencil marks to photos that already look like sketches. It offers plenty of fun and more creative freedom.
Photo Sketch Maker doesn’t limit you to black and white sketches. The app is full of colorful sketch filters as well as color pencil tools for free drawing on images.
The app allows you to pull photos from your camera library or social media accounts. It accepts JPEG or PNG files. You also use the in-app camera to take brand new photos, allowing you to take a picture and edit it straight away.
There are two reasons to skip it. There’s no iPhone version at all, and its Google Play rating has slipped to 4.0 stars, the lowest of the dedicated sketch apps on this list. It’s ad-supported too, so it’s a quick tool rather than one you’ll live in.
Download: Android
4. Canva
| Brand |
Brand
Canva
|
| Supported Devices |
Supported Devices
iOS and Android
|
| Price |
Price
Free with in-app purchases
|
| User Rating |
User Rating
4.7*
|
| No. of Downloads |
No. of Downloads
500M+
|
| Key Features |
Key Features
Sketch and art filters, photo effects, editing tools, document editing tools
|
While Canva isn’t strictly a photo-to-sketch app, it does have the tools to turn a photo into a sketch. It has plenty of other photo editing tools, too. You can even use it to create and edit documents. Canva might be overkill for some users, but it’s one of the best editing apps out now.
Basic editing tools allow you to crop, rotate, and flip images. Then you have more advanced editing tools that adjust color, saturation, brightness, and contrast. You can even sharpen out-of-focus areas of your images.
This app wouldn’t make the list without good art filters, so rest assured Canva has plenty. These include a variety of pencil and pen sketch styles. But it also offers dozens of art styles, both classic and contemporary.
Canva even has AI tools for streamlined photo editing. The AI tools help you produce pro-level posts for Instagram and Facebook, taking your social media game to a new level. The AI also helps you with photo editing and document design.
You also have stickers and text features that add even more color and excitement to your images. It also has a photo grid and photo collage maker.
Canva’s video editing tools are ideal for content creators, influencers, and online marketers. You can crop, rotate, and flip videos. You also can add audio tracks and sound effects from their media library.
Canva is one of the most versatile design apps for iOS or Android. Thankfully, it’s available for both systems. It’s free to download, but some of the more advanced features are only available as in-app purchases.
That versatility is also the catch. Canva is a design app that happens to do sketches, so the sketch effects sit several taps inside a much bigger tool. If a pencil effect is all you came for, one of the dedicated apps above will be faster and simpler.
5. Pencil Photo Sketch
| Brand |
Brand
Minerva Studios
|
| Supported Devices |
Supported Devices
iOS and Android
|
| Price |
Price
Free with in-app purchases
|
| User Rating |
User Rating
4.5*
|
| No. of Downloads |
No. of Downloads
50M+
|
| Key Features |
Key Features
Variety of sketch filters, drawing tools, simple interface, social media integration
|
Pencil Photo Sketch owes a large part of its popularity to the simplicity and ease of use of the interface. It’s the perfect photo-to-sketch app if you’re new to photo editing. The app is appropriate for all ages. It’s also available for Android units and iPhones.
Upload images from your camera roll or take a picture using the in-app camera. You can then add one of the many sketch filters to create an artistic masterpiece.
There’s a good variety of pencil sketch filters. You can go for ink or colored crayon filters. You can draw freely using the pencil and brush tools. You can also create silhouettes from standard photos.
The app also offers fun cartoon-style filters for more intense transformations. It’s a great choice for creating an avatar for your social media profiles.
And speaking of social media, the app has integrated features with platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Once you’ve turned a photo into a sketch, it’s just one click and your new image will be posted on social media.
The basic version of the app is free to download on iOS or Android systems. However, there is a paid version of the app with a larger variety of filters and features.
Simplicity cuts both ways. There are no layers, no local adjustments, and no way to fine-tune a filter once it’s applied. If you want control over the result, Prisma or Canva will serve you better.
6. Clip2Comic: Toon Photo Editor
| Brand |
Brand
Digital Masterpieces
|
| Supported Devices |
Supported Devices
iOS
|
| Price |
Price
Free with in-app purchases
|
| User Rating |
User Rating
4.8*
|
| No. of Downloads |
No. of Downloads
100K+
|
| Key Features |
Key Features
Many art, sketch, cartoon and comic style filters, video editing tools, local editing tools
|
Clip2Comic: Toon Photo Editor is one of the best photo-to-sketch apps exclusive to iOS systems, both iPhone and iPad. Unfortunately, it is not available to Android users. It is, however, packed with fun features and tools for transforming bog-standard photos into exciting artworks.
Using this app, you can transform any photo into a beautiful sketch. It can be a classic pencil sketch or something more exotic like a manga-style creation. You can also add color and other effects.
And it’s not just sketches. You can turn photos into cartoons of all kinds. The app even has comic book styles that replicate all your favorite comics from Marvel or DC. You can also turn a photo into an incredible movie poster.
You also have free drawing tools for more creative control, allowing you to use the Apple Pencil. It also has local adjustment tools for precision editing.
And the app isn’t limited to image editing. You can also use it for fantastic video transformations, turning normal video footage into moving comic books or cartoon characters.
It can handle high-resolution video, anything up to 4K. This allows you to import footage from proper 4K cameras and edit it through the app. The results are jaw-dropping videos that look like professional animations.
The iOS lock-out is the obvious reason to look elsewhere, and it isn’t the only one. Clip2Comic is tuned for bold comic and manga lines, so a soft graphite pencil study isn’t what it does best. For that, go back to Pencil Photo Sketch.
Download: iOS
7. Watercolor Effects & Filters
| Brand |
Brand
qnisoft
|
| Supported Devices |
Supported Devices
iOS and Android
|
| Price |
Price
Free with in-app purchases
|
| User Rating |
User Rating
4.1*
|
| No. of Downloads |
No. of Downloads
500K+
|
| Key Features |
Key Features
People and scene modes, various watercolor photo filters, simple and easy interface
|
Watercolor Effects and Filters is one of the simplest apps on our list. But if you want an app that turns photos into watercolor sketches and paintings, this is all you need. The simple interface makes it easy for anyone to use, even the most tech-shy users.
There are two main modes when creating your watercolor images. These are People and Scene mode. The former is used for portraits and group shots, while the latter is used for wider scenes.
You have a wide variety of watercolor styles to choose from. You can also add a smear effect, which gives you a more authentic watercolor look.
The app also allows you to change the lightness, brightness, and color intensity. You can also change the type of paper the watercolor painting is on, changing the texture and final finish.
Once your watercolor transformation is complete, you can export the high-resolution image. It’s then easy to share your creation on social media.
Watercolor Effects & Filters is available for iPhones and Android smartphones and is free to download. It isn’t free of strings, though. The Google Play listing carries both ads and in-app purchases, so the cleanest experience is a paid one.
It also does one thing. There are no pencil or ink styles here, only watercolor, and at 500K+ downloads and 4.1 stars on Google Play it has the smallest user base on this list. Treat it as a specialist you install alongside a general art app, not instead of one.
8. Photo Paint: Painting Maker
| Brand |
Brand
GeniusTools Labs
|
| Supported Devices |
Supported Devices
Android
|
| Price |
Price
Free with in-app purchases
|
| User Rating |
User Rating
4.2*
|
| No. of Downloads |
No. of Downloads
1M+
|
| Key Features |
Key Features
Strong selection of art filters and photo effects, easy to use interface, social media integration
|
Photo Paint: Painting Maker is another fantastic art app that turns photos into artistic masterpieces. It’s a simple, easy-to-use app without the more advanced features of some of the other apps on our list. But it’s still great fun and does a good job of turning photos into sketches and paintings.
You can import images from your smartphone library or take new pictures in the app. Once you have your photo, the app has some basic editing tools like crop, rotate, and flip.
It’s then time to add your art filter. As well as various sketch styles, you have a good selection of brush stroke effects. You can choose the different paint styles you want, like oil, acrylic, or watercolor.
The app also offers filters that replicate specific schools of art, like expressionist, renaissance, or pastoral.
You can use your finished pieces as wallpaper on your smartphone or tablet. Or you can export the images to your social media profile for attention-grabbing profile pictures.
There’s no iPhone version, and the editing stops at crop, rotate, and flip. Its 4.2-star Google Play rating reflects an ad-supported app that does paint effects well and everything else barely at all.
Download: Android
9. MyEdit
| Brand |
Brand
CyberLink
|
| Supported Devices |
Supported Devices
iOS and Android
|
| Price |
Price
Free with in-app purchases
|
| User Rating |
User Rating
3.2*
|
| No. of Downloads |
No. of Downloads
500K+
|
| Key Features |
Key Features
AI Sketch for pencil and oil-paint looks, 30+ AI art styles, AI object removal and replace, image to video
|
MyEdit is the app CyberLink used to sell as Vivid AI. Same app, new name. It’s still the pick here if you want artificial intelligence doing the drawing instead of dropping a filter on top. It comes from the same developer as PowerDirector and PhotoDirector, so it’s a bigger operation than most of the small studios on this list.
The tool you want is AI Sketch. Feed it a photo and it draws a new pencil or oil-paint version instead of laying a filter over your original. That is what separates it from the one-tap apps higher up this list, and it’s the closest thing here to handing your picture to an illustrator.
The rest of the app is built the same way. AI Art gives you more than 30 portrait styles, AI Anime turns a selfie into anime art across 20 styles, and AI Headshot and AI Try-On rework a portrait into something you’d actually put on a profile.
AI Removal and AI Replace handle the tidying up. You can erase a photobomber, wipe out a sign, or paint in something new with a brush and a text prompt. The art styles run from polaroid looks, if you want a film photography feel, through to toy-box figurines.
It goes further than stills, too. Image to Video animates a photo using models like Kling and Google Veo, and Text to Image generates pictures from a written prompt in more than 30 art styles. None of that helps you sketch a photo, but it’s there if you want it.
Check the ratings before you install it. MyEdit rates 2.9 stars on the App Store and 3.2 on Google Play, the two lowest scores on this page by some distance, and the AI tools that make it interesting sit behind in-app purchases. Try the free tools first, and if you only want a pencil sketch, one of the cheaper, better-rated apps above will do it without the sales pitch.
MyEdit is available for iOS and Android smartphones and is free to download.
Conclusion
Thanks to the apps listed above, it has never been easier to turn a photo into a sketch. There are dedicated sketch and drawing apps with filters for this specific art style. But other apps, like Prisma, offer art styles of all kinds. They allow you to transform a boring photo into anything from a Picasso to a Manga comic book.
Our list has explored a wide range of photo-to-sketch apps. Some are simple and easy to use, while others have more advanced editing tools. Some even use AI to do the drawing for you. It’s all about finding the app that best suits your needs.
If you want somewhere to start, install Prisma. It’s free, it’s on both platforms, and its 500-plus filters will show you which styles you actually like. Once you know that, add the specialist that matches. Watercolor Effects & Filters for paint, Clip2Comic for comics on an iPhone, MyEdit when you want AI to redraw the picture rather than filter it. Then take a portrait and a landscape through the same filter. The two rarely suit the same style, and you’ll know inside a minute which app you actually want.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you turn a photo into a sketch for free?
Yes. Every app on this page is free to download, and all of them will produce a sketch without you paying anything. What the money buys is the removal of ads and access to the larger filter libraries. Watercolor Effects & Filters, Photo Sketch Maker, Pencil Photo Sketch, and Photo Paint are all ad-supported, so a paid upgrade mostly buys you a quieter screen.
Which app makes the most realistic pencil sketch?
Pencil Photo Sketch and Photo Sketch Maker are the two built for exactly that job, and both give you pencil, hard pencil, and pen-and-ink styles. Pencil Photo Sketch is the one to pick if you have an iPhone, because Photo Sketch Maker is Android only.
Do these apps work on both iPhone and Android?
Most of them do. Prisma, ToonMe, Canva, Pencil Photo Sketch, Watercolor Effects & Filters, and MyEdit are on both. Clip2Comic is iOS only, while Photo Sketch Maker and Photo Paint are Android only.
Do you need a good photo to start with?
It helps more than people expect. A sketch filter works from edges and contrast, so a sharp, well-lit photo with a clear subject sketches far better than a dim or busy one. If the original is soft, the sketch will be mush, and no app on this list can fix that.
