23 October 2026

Simon Willison builds a browser tool that paints photos like a brush

First reported

Simon Willison ran this on 23 October.

Simon Willison, a well-known independent software developer, built a web page that repaints a chosen photo on a digital canvas.
The page simulates a paintbrush, so the picture appears gradually as if being painted by hand.
It uses a common image-processing method (Sobel edge detection) to find outlines, and needs no outside code libraries.

Our read

Only one of the 30 tracked newsletters picked this up, and it was Simon Willison's own. It is the third Willison release we have logged since 2026-10-13, following llm-gemini 0.35 on 2026-10-14 and llm-echo 0.5 on 2026-10-19.

Earlier on this story

Oct 19Simon Willison releases llm-echo 0.5, a testing plugin for his LLM tool
Oct 14Simon Willison releases llm-gemini 0.35 with Gemini 4 support
Oct 13Simon Willison releases alpha tool for editing files without AI seeing secrets

Written by Newskeryx from which newsletters covered this story and from our own archive.

How it was covered

Simon WillisonDaily notes and links

A photo repainting tool, simulated paintbrushes, Sobel edge detection, and the earlier watercolour experiment