Converting photos into pencil or charcoal drawings. The Solution: Hundreds of "photo to sketch" apps exist, but most produce flat, lifeless results. Sketch uses sophisticated cross-hatching algorithms that mimic the pressure and direction of a human hand. You can control stroke length, stroke thickness, and the paper texture. The results are gallery-quality black-and-white or color pencil sketches.

Creating soft, chalk-like pastel artwork from photos. The Solution: Pastel simulates dry media on textured paper. Unlike oil painting plugins that use thick blobs of color, Pastel creates granular, smudged strokes. It excels at portraits, giving skin a velvety, dreamlike quality while retaining underlying facial structure.

Licenses are available for both and macOS (Ventura, Sonoma, Sequoia) . They support both Intel and Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3) via Rosetta 2, with native support improving in recent builds.

The philosophy behind AKVIS is simple: Each plugin focuses on a single, specialized task—whether that’s turning a midday photo into a golden-hour masterpiece, transforming a portrait into a charcoal sketch, or restoring a damaged century-old photograph.

Leo had always loved photography, but like many hobbyists, he felt something was missing. His shots were technically fine—sharp, well-composed, properly exposed—but they lacked that spark . You know, the kind that makes people stop scrolling and whisper, “Wow.”

: The most comprehensive "all-in-one" pack containing all AKVIS software. It typically offers a 60% discount

The focuses strictly on creative transformation. It includes 8 software products at 50% off . Featured Plugins: Sketch: Converts photos into realistic pencil drawings.