Recently, I discovered a really neat little program called "Fotosketcher" that takes your photos and turns them into drawings, watercolors and oil paintings (well, at least the results look like those kinds of works). There are other programs out there that do similar things, but Fotosketcher stands out for several reasons. First, it's fast. (On the images down below, I started with a 1600 x 1200 pixel photo and it took Fotosketcher only 20-30 seconds to do it's thing - your mileage may vary, of course.) There are lots of parameters you can change, which allows you to apply just a little modification to your photo or a lot. And Fotosketcher is free (donations accepted, of course).
This video shows Fotosketcher in action and gives you an idea of just how simple it is to use. (Press the "fullscreen" button to be able to see what's going on better.)
To give you a closer look at the results Fotosketcher produces, here is a picture I took at the Summer Palace, just outside of Beijing.
Here is same picture after running Fotosketcher's "color pencil" option.
Here is what the "watercolor" option produces.
And finally, here is an "oil painting" produced with Fotosketcher.
In the first 2 examples, I just used the default values for the parameter settings. But in the "oil painting" example above, I boosted several of the settings above the default values (color and brushstrokes specifically). It seems like getting more "aggressive" with the settings produces a picture that looks less like a manipulated photograph and more like an original drawing/painting.
If you've got that "creative urge" eating at you and a bunch of photos you don't know what to do with, give Fotosketcher a try. You'll be surprised how easily you can create a "masterpiece."