How to Turn a Photo Into a Cartoon

Written by Ivana Kotorchevikj Streaming

Linkedin Twitter - 13 min read

Are you looking for a fun way to add some flair to your photos, why not turn them into cartoons or sketches?

Whether you want to create cartoon avatars for your company’s ‘About us’ page, or just want to add hilarious cartoon elements to your social media photos, there are a ton of cartoon apps on the net that allow you to add a caricature and sketch effects to your photos.

The best thing is that there are cartoon photo editor apps you can use on your computer or your smartphone, depending on which device you use to edit photos.

However, since the choice of available cartoon apps is endless, in this post we’ve gathered the best free cartoon photo apps for making your photo into a cartoon on desktop as well as for Android and iPhone.

Best apps to make a photo into a cartoon for iPhone

These are some of the top iOS apps you can use to convert your photos into cartoons and sketches.

  1. Cartoon Yourself

Cartoon Yourself - Cartoon Face app

The Cartoon Face app has a really user-friendly interface. Apart from that, the cartoon photo app offers a wide range of emotions and photo effects to create a cartoon avatar of yourself.

You can also upload a photo from your phone or take one directly in the app. After turning your picture into a cartoon, you can share your cartoon photo on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook as a still photo or animated video.

  1. Clip2Comic & Caricature Maker

Clip2Comic & Caricature Maker

With the Clip2Comic & Caricature Maker app, you can turn your everyday photos and videos into funny cartoons, sketches, and caricatures on your iPhone or iPad. Besides converting your photos into cartoons, the Clip2Comic also offers a live preview feature that lets you see how the photos and videos are going to look after you cartoonize them.

  1. Cartoon Photo Editor

Cartoon Photo Editor

The Cartoon Photo Editor app for iPhone is one of the best apps on the App Store right now. The app enables you to transform the photos in your gallery into cartoons or capture videos and photos.

You can choose from different cartoon styles and effects such as Cartoon, Sketch, Emboss, Pixellate, Crosshatch, Swirl, Halftone, Dots, Thermal Vision, etc. You can preview to see the cartoon result before you even snap a selfie or capture a video.

  1. Photo To Cartoon Yourself Edit

Photo To Cartoon Yourself Edit

Photo To Cartoon is one of the most popular cartoon picture apps with which you can easily convert your photos into funny cartoons or create avatars in just a few taps. There is a wide choice of cartoon filters you can apply to your photos and even add text and stickers to them.

The app doesn’t shrink or stretch the pictures during photo editing, producing cartoon images with high resolution within just a few seconds. After converting your photos into cartoons, you can save them to your phone or send them via email.

  1. MomentCam Cartoons & Stickers

MomentCam Cartoons & Stickers

The MomentCam app is currently one of the most downloaded photos to cartoon apps. It allows you to create personalized emoticons and hilarious cartoons.

The cartoon photo app is also extremely easy to use - you just select a photo you want to convert into a cartoon and you select a background that fits the context of your photo. You can also have fun adding glasses and picking hairstyles or beards to your avatar. Additionally, there are thousands of realistic filters and effects to make your photo a real caricature.

Bonus read: How to recover permanently deleted photos from gallery

Best apps to make a photo into a cartoon for Android

These are some of the coolest cartoon photo apps for Android.

  1. Cartoon Photo Editor

Cartoon Photo Editor

The Cartoon Photo Editor app for Android is one of the most popular free cartoon converter apps on the Google Play Store. The photo-to-cartoon app allows you to add cool cartoon and art filters to existing or new pictures.

The app enables you to use the phone’s front and back cameras to capture videos or take photos. Also, you can preview the cartoon effects in real-time before you snap a picture or capture a video. The auto-focus feature helps you create crispy photos. You can choose from many cartoon filters such as Thermal Vision, Crosshatch, Cartoon, Oil Painting, Sketch, etc.

  1. Cartoon Yourself

Cartoon Yourself

Although the Cartoon Yourself app doesn’t allow you to take photos or record videos, it’s a great app to turn your photo into a cartoon for beginners. It’s really simple to use - you just tap on ‘Add a Photo’ to select a picture and then select ‘Apply Effect’ to browse through the rich collection of beautiful cartoon effects and stickers.

When you turn your photo into a cartoon, you can save it on your phone or share it with your friends on social media.

  1. Cartoon Pictures – Cartoon Photo Editor

Cartoon Pictures – Cartoon Photo Editor

The Cartoon Pictures – Cartoon Photo Editor app is one of the best photo-to-cartoon apps for Android that allows you to turn your ordinary pictures into real artwork by adding cartoon effects, oil paintings, and artwork on canvas.

The selfie camera feature allows you to make a cartoon out of your photo in just a few seconds. There are a dozen amazing cartoon photo effects, animation effects, pencil sketch effects, smooth art filters, and painting effects to choose from. After creating your cartoon or sketch, you can share it on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter.

  1. Painnt – Art & Cartoon Filters

Painnt – Art & Cartoon Filters

The Painnt – Art & Cartoon Filters is a professional photo-to-cartoon app for Android with more than a thousand cartoon filters and effects. This app is perfect for you if you want to edit your photo and customize your cartoon filters setting with different parameters.

The advanced photo editor lets you control the transparency, saturation, or brightness of all your images when converting them into cartoons. Besides cartooning your images, Painnt offers a creative community where you can discover similar artwork and share your creations with other people.

There’s a free version of the app, but it limits the size of the photos you export. If you want to download the pictures in HD, you’d have to choose one of the subscription models.

  1. Art Camera – Cartoon, Pencil Sketch Art Effect Photo

Art Camera – Cartoon, Pencil Sketch Art Effect Photo

If you like sketching, you should definitely install the Art Camera - Cartoon, Pen Sketch app. This photo cartoon app allows you to apply pencil sketches and amazing artistic and cartoon effects to your existing photos.

You can choose from a collection of different oil painting and cartoon photo effects and filters to edit your photos, as well as adjust the contrast, brightness, and saturation. Besides the amazing editing options, the pic-to-cartoon app doubles as a photo organizer app that helps you efficiently manage and sort your photos by date and time tags.

The best apps to make a photo into a cartoon for desktop

If you prefer to use a desktop computer to turn your photo into a cartoon, these are the best websites to convert photos to cartoons online.

  1. ToonMe

ToonMe

ToonMe is a great website that helps you convert your photos into cartoons. It uses AI to convert your ordinary image into an amazing cartoon.

You can either use the web version or download the app from the Google Play Store or App Store. Both the web and app versions have a super simple interface.

If you are using the web version, just click on the big spinning ‘+’ icon in the middle of the screen and upload the photo which you want to make into a cartoon. On the next page, you’ll see several really creative cartoons you can choose from.

The only downside is that the app version has a 3-day trial, after which you have to pay $29.99 a year.

  1. Image to Cartoon

Image to Cartoon

Image to Cartoon is a picture-to-cartoon tool available in a web version for Mac, but you can also download it on iPhone or Android. The cartoon app is an AI-based tool that allows you to cartoonize your pictures for free.

Apart from converting your selfies and pictures into cartoons and creating great avatars, you can also ‘emoji’ yourself.

The app has a free and paid version. If you are using the free version, there’s a limit of 10 cartoons per week. The subscription plans range from $4.9 for a one-time payment, up to $14 for the monthly plan. You can choose from a monthly or yearly plan.

  1. Sketch Me!

Sketch Me!

Sketch Me! is photo-cartoon software developed by Microsoft and is available to Windows 10 users for free. You turn your photos into drawings, sketches, or cartoons in just a few clicks and create real artworks.

The wide collection of filters includes pencil sketch, color sketch, comic, neon, etc., to help you create the best cartoon out of your photo. Also, you can adjust the contrast, brightness, and saturation of your cartoons, and share them with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, and email. However, it is a bit limited as to the image format - it only allows pictures to be edited and saved in .jpeg format.

  1. BeFunky

BeFunky

BeFunky is a web platform you can access from any device web browser. The web app offers amazing editing tools for your pictures, including the feature to turn your photos into cartoons.

Although most of the BeFunky photo editing features are free, unfortunately, the pic-to-cartoon feature is not. If you want to cartoonize your photos, you’d have to upgrade to a paid monthly or yearly plan. However, it’s totally worth the buck considering it offers some professional filters to create Insta-worthy covers.

Apart from the photo editing tool, BeFunky offers helpful photo editing and design guides and tips. Also, you can try out their features for free before deciding to upgrade to their premium subscription.

  1. Photo Cartoon

Photo Cartoon

Photo Cartoon is a free web cartoon converter that allows you to make your photos into cartoons, paintings, drawings, caricatures, or other pretty filters.

The cartoon platform is really easy to use. Go to their website, upload a picture from your computer or paste a URL and click on the ‘Cartoonize Only’ button to generate a cartoon. After the cartoon generator creates your cartoon image you can use the filters to adjust the brightness, contrast, saturation, hue, and et. before you download it.

Additionally, you can pay $24.95 if you want to have the watermark removed from your cartoon.

Conclusion

These are some of the best cartoon photo apps you can use if you are looking to turn your photos into cool cartoons whether you are using an iPhone, Android or PC/laptop. Some of them are free photo to cartoon apps, and some are photo editing tools that require you to pay for a monthly or yearly subscription if you want to use the cartoon feature.

Browse through them and decide which of them would work best for your needs.