Filters That Create Amazing iPhone Art

Amazing iPhone Art

At heart, we are all artists, and if we are not actively making art, we are busy appreciating it. Like an artist, we notice when the light falls a certain way in a park. We also notice beautifully plated food or our own amazing reflection. Then we reproduce the moment, not with paint or clay, but with our smart phones. And it does not stop there, because then the real work begins. Apps like Snapseed and Instagram allow us to turn Iphone photos into art. These apps give us the freedom to accentuate the light, to deepen the colors, to blur or sharpen the focus. These are filters. When we don’t use one, we even have a hashtag for it: “#nofilterneeded.” It is as if we want to confirm to the world that the image is as close to real as it gets.

How Prisma Turns iPhone Photos into Art

Filters are layers, like veneers. They can distort, discolor, and deceive, but fundamentally they are superficial. Thus, they don’t really turn your iphone photos into art. Filters don’t create. And art is all about creation. And this is where we feel the divide between the “artist” and the rest of us. But what if you could capture the essence of a Picasso in a selfie? Or a Van Gogh in your landscape pic? In other words, an app that did more than just layer, but actually re-created your image. An app that produced amazing iPhone art. Enter Prisma. If you haven’t already heard, the app debuted 9 months ago. It does not merely filter. Instead, it deconstructs the pixels in a photo. Then it refigures their spatial arrangement into a new image in a specific art style.

Alexey Moiseenkov created the app, and he also founded Prisma Labs in Moscow. The science behind the app is complex, involving neural networks and A.I technology to manipulate images. The end result, turning android and iphone photos into art, is nothing short of magical.

Photography and Painting: A Long Rivalry

Art has always been about artifice, about representation and reproduction. When Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre introduced his Daguerrotype  (the first photograph) to the world in 1839 the artistic playing field shifted.

At first, there was resistance. Many people saw photography as commercial and banal. But slowly photography gained ground alongside painting as an art form. Yet there has always been some kind of rivalry between the two. It began with the painter Paul Delaroche, who allegedly exclaimed “Painting is dead!” after viewing the first photographic reproductions. Later, some artists faced accusations of copying photographs to get realism in their paintings. In short, from the salons in Paris onward, the two mediums have had a long and complicated history. That is what makes Prisma all the more provocative as a technology. It literally turns Android and iphone photos into art by marrying the two mediums. In doing so, it highlights the value of each and introduces a whole new generation to influential artists.

Amazing iPhone Art for Everyone

The app lets anyone with access to technology create amazing iPhone art and join a medium that might otherwise exclude them. Detractors may argue that the app makes it all “too easy.” However, there will always be artists who push the boundaries and explore the full potential of the technology.

And that is the beauty of art and of technology. They change our lives. They widen our perspective so we can see things that we previously could only imagine. In other words, it is not just a filter over our eyes. It is the ability to remove the filter and create a whole new world.