Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci died more than five hundred years ago. He never lived to see the invention of the camera, and it’s hard to know what he would have made of it. It’s possible that he would have been fascinated with the device and - given his penchant for innovation - set about the task of creating a better one. It’s equally possible that he would have been appalled by it, and despaired of what the sudden advent of photography would mean for painting. We’re reasonably sure that he would have been utterly perplexed by the popularity of selfies - and yet now, thanks to modern technology, you can give your selfies the da Vinci treatment if you really want to.
As of the start of April 2020, Google has
introduced a new feature to its Arts and Culture app, called 'App Transfer,' and it can take any picture from your camera and turn it into a masterpiece in the da Vinci style. We double-checked to make sure that it wasn't an April Fool's prank, and it isn't. The feature is there and ready to be downloaded if you already have the app - and if you don't and you want to give it a try, it will be contained within the version that you'll find in your usual app store. Despite the complexity and sophistication of the visual products it creates, it appears that the feature is easy to use.
In practice, the feature works just like any other filter you might use on Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, or anywhere else you like to upload and edit your photos. The effect happens internally on your phone rather than requiring the image to be uploaded anywhere else, and if
the reviews we’ve seen are to be believed, it results in a complete re-interpretation of the original image. App Transfer doesn't just overlay the photograph you've taken - it studies it and then uses an algorithm to replicate it in whatever style you've chosen. You can have the app transform the entire image, or just a small part of it if you'd prefer. If you want to, you can even save a GIF file of your original picture transforming into the da Vinci picture.
Digitally recreating the works of Leonardo da Vinci feels like a novelty, but it isn’t a new trend. We’ve seen multiple attempts to digitize and re-interpret the Mona Lisa over the years, and we’ve even seen da Vinci making headway at online slots websites. While it may not seem as auspicious a surrounding for the genius’s works as the Louvre, several da Vinci paintings have been incorporated into online slots that bear his name, including ‘Da Vinci Diamonds’ and ‘Da Vinci’s Mystery.’ All of the images that are used in the games are faithful replications of the original work, so at some point in the past, the creators of
all UK Online Slots must have agreed upon terms with copyright holders to make use of them. As with the concept of the camera earlier on, we don’t know what the artist would have made of being immortalized by online slots, but he would doubtless have found the concept of the internet fascinating.
While the idea of turning your pictures into a da Vinci masterpiece is being used as the eye-catching appeal of the updated application, his is not the only work you can choose to have your pictures amended to imitate. If da Vinci isn't your thing - which we find hard to imagine - there are a range of other famous styles you could go for instead. Filters and algorithms based on the works of Monet, Frida Kahlo, van Gogh, Lee Krasner, Edvard Munch, and even Andy Warhol have been included in the app. You could take a single picture and have it replicated in multiple different ways if you so desired - and you could have a lot of fun doing it! While nobody could ever hope to create a stroke-for-stroke match for the work of a master, the results are close enough to be recognizable. You won't be able to print it out and sell it to your nearest gallery as a long-lost masterpiece, but it should at least fool some - if not all - of your friends and family!
For best results, users should choose an image that resembles the artwork that they’re looking to recreate. That means if you’re using a selfie, you’ll get a better result from the van Gogh ‘Self Portrait’ effect or the Edvard Munch ‘Scream’ effect than you would from the Monet filter - but it’s still interesting to see what each filter can do to an image, and how many ways one photo can be re-interpreted to look dramatically different, and yet still remain recognizable as the picture you took with your own hands.
This isn't the first time that the Arts and Culture app has found itself grabbing headlines or garnering attention. In 2018 it introduced a new feature that allowed you to match a picture of your own face to a portrait by an artist somewhere else in the world. It wasn't always accurate - in fact, it was sometimes hilariously inaccurate - but it was always entertaining, and comparison pictures generated by the app briefly went viral on social media. Since its launch in 2016, the app has been doubling up as both a form of entertainment and a means of providing education. It can do plenty of amusing or impressive things when it comes to image manipulation, but it's also packed full of information on artists and their work - some of which will be new even to the most educated and knowledgeable art enthusiast.
We could all do with something to occupy our time and take our focus away from the news at the moment, and the Arts and Culture app is free. There are definitely worse ways to spend a rainy afternoon than cycling through your photo archive recreating yourself and your friends as a world-famous work of art - so why not give it a try?
