How a Painted Whiskers portrait is actually made.

Accepted formats are JPEG, PNG, and HEIC. The file must be under 20MB, at least 768 × 768 pixels, and under 50 megapixels. Nothing else is required — no account, no card.

The image is checked as it arrives: the format is verified from the file itself rather than trusted from the browser, the dimensions are measured, and the picture is scored for quality. If it is too small or too degraded to paint from, you are told immediately, at upload — not after you have paid.

A clear, eye-level close-up where the face, eyes, and markings are visible is worth more than a high-resolution shot from across the room.

Painted Whiskers currently offers 253 styles across 22 collections — Renaissance and old-master oil, royal state portraiture, Art Deco, pop screenprint, line drawing, psychedelic, and more. Each style is a written painting brief, not a filter preset. Browse them in the style gallery, or start with the classical and Renaissance styles.

Your photograph and the style brief go to the image engine together. This is an image-to-image render, not a text prompt guessing at a cat: the source photo is the reference the painting is built on, which is what keeps the markings and the face yours.

One pass renders three portraits in parallel across three different engines, each with its own painterly bias. That is deliberate — you get three genuine interpretations to compare, not three near-identical copies.

Before you see it, each portrait is scored 1–10 against your original photograph by a separate vision model, on one question: is this still the same cat?

A render that scores below our threshold is automatically regenerated once, and the better of the two is kept. If it still falls short, we show you the best we have and flag the session for a person to review. This check is automated, and we would rather say so than call it an atelier.

The three portraits come back watermarked, side by side. Look at them, compare them, come back tomorrow. Nothing has been charged and nothing expires on you. When one is right, you approve it — and approval is a hard requirement: checkout will not open on a session that has not been approved, because printed goods made from your photo cannot be resold or returned.

Every visit includes 5 free passes — 15 free portraits. Retry with a different style or a different photo as often as those last; it costs nothing. If you run out, 10 more passes are $10 while signed in, and that full $10 is credited toward any portrait you buy. Buying a portrait while signed in adds another 15 passes to your account.

The approved artwork goes to our print partners — archival paper and canvas on one side, apparel and gifts on the other — and ships to you. See the full product range for what the artwork can become.