Auto painting is when an artist uses a software program to clone and automatically paint a digital photo.  Within minutes the computer clones the photo does 100% of the work using emulated paint strokes to give some type of painted look.  The artist then usually erases parts of the auto painted image around the eyes, nose, and mouth to bring back details of the original photo.

When manual painting, the canvas starts out blank and every aspect of the painting is done by hand by the artist using traditional painting methods.  A digital pencil is used to create a rough sketch, a base color is blocked in blended and refined one brush stroke at a time.