Work of art

All the delightful moments that we capture through our phone cameras — from a casual stroll in the park to a date with a loved one or a quirky workout selfie — can now be literally preserved as ‘work of art’ images through Prisma, a photo editing application.

Taking inspiration from art movements and the artworks of geniuses like Picasso, Van Gogh and Monet, it will catch you in its prism of artistic possibilities.

The application utilises neural network — a computer system modeled on the human brain and nervous system and artificial intelligence, which work in confluence, to transform the image into an artistic effect.

It was created by Alexey Moiseenkov, and was launched on June 11, 2016 as a free mobile app. It gained immense immediate popularity with over 7.5 million downloads in its first week. Initially, available only to iOS operators, the app soon opened its doors to android users too.

“Prisma is like a new generation filter package. It gives us a feeling that we have come ahead from those clichéd filters. The best thing about it is its creativity,” says Kaushaki, 15, from Noida who feels that the app is completely out of the box.

The application at present offers around 29 filters such as ‘Urban’, ‘Dreams’, ‘Flame Flowers’ to name a few. Once the image is generated on the app, it can be uploaded immediately on the social media.

Simran, a college student from Amritsar, says, “One thing that I really like about Prisma is that it not only focuses on beautification as the other apps out there, but makes one look edgy, trendy and what not, completely transforming the image. My favourite filter on the app is #geturban.”

The app has gathered acclaim for being intuitive and well organised. Elaborating, Rahul, 21, from Delhi, says, “What makes it amazing is that one just needs to upload the image and edit however one wants it to be. We can even very simply adjust the degree of a particular effect that we want in our image. Its clean design and fast output process makes it an ideal app for avid image editors.”

However, even after creating reverberations and a ripple effect in the market, the app has a long way to go, starting from an improvement in the speed of generating the images.

“It gets a bit irritating sometimes as the filters take time to download and your patience is tested,”says Ayaan. The video and virtual reality version of the app is currently under development and will be released soon.