A Review of Better Homes and Gardens Picture Painter

Total: 89/100

I cannot think of a better or easier way to see exactly what that simple remodeling project will look like than taking a picture of the existing wall, room or even the whole house and changing those colors and materials. The Picture Painter from Better Homes and Gardens makes the specific color and material changes without any hassles so you see your remodeling before paying for it.

The Better Homes and Gardens Picture Painter allows you to repaint, reside and remake all kinds of surfaces in a picture image editor so you see the changes before lifting a paint brush. The image editor program is a unique and ingenious way to see how your room or even the whole house will look with a new paint job, different siding or even a new material like stone instead of that plain stucco.

Whatever you can imagine you can do realistically using the Picture Painter, new materials are just a paint brush away as you take your photo into the program and edit it with the new materials and colors. A simple program with basic image editing tools that are specialized for repainting in the colors and materials you can actually purchase from local home improvement stores.

All the materials and paint colors are ones the companies like Benjamin Moore and Armstrong are currently using and selling. The paints are all in colors that you can get premixed or custom mixed in the brands you want from your local home improvement stores. Forget going to the store and picking out little color swatches on cards, color the room or walls in real life pictures and really see what that new color or wallpaper will look like.

For a quick example of the simplicity of this program I redid my tiny little kitchen in a new cabinet and color scheme, which took only about an hour of playing with the program to accomplish. This was the first time I used the program and it became easier and better the more I worked at my project. You also do not have to get perfectionist perfect about the work as you are giving yourself a basic idea and a good look at what the final outcome of the project will be.

I took a picture of the kitchen and edited out some of the things I have installed such as shelves to give myself a good blank slate to start with. You can just leave in things like furniture or move them out of the way when you take the picture or delete them using another image editor like Photoshop. For pictures like a house you can use the whole house and show what a before and after would look like with say, new brick instead of the old gray concrete, a new roofing and some different siding.

Importing your picture is easy and Picture Painter comes with some basic image editing and enhancing on the image when you start. You can crop, rotate and perform some basic enhancements like brighten and change contrast to your imported image. The next thing you need to decide is what you want to do to your room or house; new paint, wallpaper, siding, anything from major companies like Armstrong, Benjamin Moore, Sherwin Williams, Mohawk and DuPont are some but not all of the brand name material and paints.

When editing your image you work in layers like many image editors, this way what you do in one layer is not affected by another and it is easy to get rid of one change if you want. You simply use each layer as a test as well as using layers to work on one area of the picture with things like perspective. The perspective is how you change the slant of a covering like the brick and siding of a house on the side that is not nice and horizontal or vertical to the main view.

If you look at my house picture the brick and siding wraps nicely around the corner and the slant of the siding and brick is very easy to accomplish with a simple perspective tool adjustment. Simply start a new layer when you get to the side of the house and paint in the brick or siding of the side, I didn’t worry too much about covering the windows on the side.

Then when you want to change the slant of the entire side you click on the mode and change to the perspective which will give you a big box. Move the corners of the box to correspond to the corners of the building and it will skew the current layer to the corners you put the perspective box on. The layer is now slanted according to the view and how you placed the corners, and looks correct.

This perspective tool is one example of how they have specialized the program to a house remodeling and repainting tool for an actual picture of how your project will look before spending the hundreds or even thousands of dollars on the real thing. Picture Painter helps you decide before spending your hard earned money on that repainting project or before you purchase the materials for that simple remodeling. Before you spend the money on materials, or direct a contractor to purchase that material make sure you are going with the paint colors, siding materials and correct wood, stone or other materials that you like and will look good.

The Picture Painter is a great way to change colors and materials before you actually do any work on the real thing and gives you the perfect picture of how things will look when the work is done. No second guessing if that color paint will clash with the front door, garage or even the neighbors. Simply take a picture of your project and make the changes in the program to see for yourself how it will look.

The Better Homes and gardens Picture Painter allows you to see in real living color and using your own photographs what that remodeling will look like before you even spend the money for the paint or wallpaper. I really like the idea of being able to see what the changes you want to make on your precious possession, your home, before you spend the money.

Picture Painter can add some simple furnishing details such as furniture or appliances but the main focus of the program is to change the materials and colors like stones, brick and siding. There is however a very good assortment of appliances from many major manufacturers like Jenn Air, Kitchen Aid and LG Electronics. These appliances are a flat image for inserting into a front view picture only.

This program is not for major remodeling like adding walls, entire cabinet systems and such. This changes the existing cabinet doors or adding appliances to a kitchen so you see how things will look in real life before actually doing the work. The entire package is created for use in the two dimensional view of a picture but does include the handy tools like perspective to ensure you see the views without any problems of the three dimensions.

Before doing any project on your home, before you lift a paint brush, before you run to the home improvement store make sure you get your project done right the first time with Picture Painter. Be totally happy with your choices before you even make them and see the choices you have with your remodeling project by using the Better Homes and Gardens Picture Painter.