Portrait genre includes art pieces, in which the person's appearance or the appearance of a group of people is engraved. The title of this genre is taken from the French phrase that denotes ?to reproduce an identical copy of something or someone?. However, the communication of the person's appearance is not the main intention of a painter. Every portrait communicates individual characteristic features of a concrete person. This is the major difference between a photo and a portrait.

A person would like to create a portrait because a portrait can render the inner world of a person, his thoughts and the spiritual history of the personality, his life experience, social position, typical features of the epoch in which the person lived. Besides, the author of the portrait does not simply register the appearance and inner world of a person. He is not an impassive observer: the personal attitude of a painter to the model, his own world outlook, and his creative style of performance influence the portrait.

Nowadays, it is becoming more and more popular to use the computer in order to create portraits, rather than traditional methods. Paint programs are being used by modern artists as tools with which they create art pieces. There are artists who use computer in their work, such as Lillian Schwartz. Lillian Schwartz is an American artist who has become one of the first to use paint programs for creating art pieces. She has been experimenting methods of creating and changing works of art with the help of new computer technologies.

Summarizing, the reasons for using the paint programs for creating portraits vary. Among them are: possibility of using image-processing techniques, altering shadings, synthesizing backgrounds, reconstructing surfaces, creating reflections and shapes, changing colors, adding tones, as well as improving the artist's productivity and the usage of artist's imagination more effectively. Consequently, a person would consider creating a portrait for an art piece with the help of computer paint programs rather than with the help of traditional methods. This will save much time and will give space to artist's imagination that will improve his productivity and the quality of art pieces.