Google'southward Arts & Culture app is a miniature mobile masterpiece, which anyone with fifty-fifty a passing interest in fine art volition savour exploring.

Launched in 2016, it was originally designed to complement the Google Arts & Culture website, which lets you nigh visit thousands of galleries and museums around the world.

But the app, which you can download for gratis for Android and iOS, now goes far across that. Information technology uses the latest technology to deliver an immersive, educational, and entertaining art experience. Allow's accept a await at its highlights.

1. Friction match a Selfie to a Painting

The all-time-known feature in the Google Arts & Civilisation app is undoubtedly Art Selfie. Information technology finds your art lookalike among thousands of famous paintings.

To detect whether you more than closely resemble the Mona Lisa or The Laughing Cavalier, tap the camera icon and select Art Selfie. Have a photo of your face and Arts & Culture will locate matching portraits.

Don't expect the results to be verbal doppelgangers, or fifty-fifty anyone you've heard of (though i of our matches was 28th Us president Woodrow Wilson). Tap the picture for information about the subject, artist, and collection, and so tap View artwork to run across the piece in close-up particular.

Incidentally, in that location take been complaints in the Play Store that Art Selfie no longer works, but only hangs. We likewise had this trouble, until we switched from cellular to Wi-Fi, which kicked it into activity.

2. Transform Your Photos Into Artworks

Fifty-fifty more fun than Art Selfie is the Art Transfer feature. This turns your photos into works of art in the style of specific painters.

Select Art Transfer in the photographic camera menu, and then either capture a photograph or use an existing one from your phone. Tap one of the thumbnails of archetype paintings and historic artifacts, and Google volition use its AI to apply that manner.

Options include Edvard Munch's The Scream, Claude Monet's Ninfee Rosa, Jean-Michel Basquiat's Human being from Naples, and cocky portraits past Andy Warhol, Frida Kahlo, and Vincent Van Gogh.

You can utilise a style to merely part of your photo by tapping the scissors icon and tracing the desired area with your finger. The app too creates a GIF showing the transformation of your image into art. Tap Share to download and share your masterpiece.

3. Insert Yourself Into Works of Art

Google Arts & Culture is likewise i of the best augmented reality apps. You can see this in the Art Filter tool, which uses AR to plow you into a living piece of work of fine art.

Select Art Filter in the photographic camera card, and so choose 1 of the five artifacts or paintings. These include a Japanese Samurai helmet from the 19th century, Van Gogh's Self Portrait (again), and Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Tap Try filter to actuate your camera and apply the filter, Snapchat-fashion. It will arrange to the position of your head and even your facial expression. Tap the circle to take a photo or hold it down to record a video.

When you're done admiring yourself, select View artwork to learn more almost the original piece.

four. Project Artwork Effectually Your Abode

You probably don't accept $lxxx million to spend on a Monet for your kitchen, so Google Arts & Civilisation lets y'all hang classic paintings for gratuitous. It uses augmented reality to project full-size versions of masterpieces anywhere in your home.

Press the photographic camera icon and tap Art Projector. Point your camera at the floor, move it in a circular movement, and a grid of dots will show you lot where the projection will announced.

You lot can and so choose one of 50 famous artworks, including Edward Hopper'south Nighthawks, Grant Wood'due south American Gothic, and Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

As if past magic, the actual-size painting will appear in front of you on a stand up. Tap the frame icon in the bottom-right corner to hang the picture on a virtual wall. Walk towards an artwork to examine it in detail, equally if it were really in front of you lot.

Art Projector is also available for thousands of other paintings in the Arts & Civilisation app. But look for the View in Augmented Reality option.

Y'all can employ the Arts & Civilisation app's bright Pocket Gallery feature to explore some of the world'due south all-time fine art without leaving your habitation.

Select Pocket Gallery in the camera menu, then indicate your camera at a flat, well-lit surface and motion your phone around slowly. As with Art Projector, a filigree of dots will highlight the augmented reality area.

Choose a virtual gallery from nine options including Meet Vermeer, The Fine art of Color, and Chauvet Cave. The size and scale of these tours means you'll need to download them first, only this as well makes them easy to revisit.

Press Enter to step into the gallery, where you can tap and swipe your screen to explore the contents of each room. Alternatively, move your phone manually to look around.

The name of the artwork and artist will announced as you "approach" a piece. Y'all can as well reverse-compression your screen to zoom in and examine the craftsmanship.

6. Play Fine art-Themed Games

Although you can try Google Arts & Civilisation's games on its website, tapping your phone'south touchscreen makes them easier and more fun to play than with your mouse.

For example, Fine art Coloring Book offers monochrome outlines of more than than xx famous paintings and photos, which y'all tin colour in using the palette of your option. Just selection a color and so tap a segment of the movie to fill it in. You can save and share the result.

Puzzle Party creates jigsaws from hundreds of artworks, which you can either solve yourself or collaborate on with friends. Simply press the puzzle pieces and movement them into place.

At that place'south also Visual Crosswords, which challenges you to group thumbnail images past theme, such as Contemporary and Renaissance art, or paintings past Van Gogh and Gauguin.

To play these games and more, keep scrolling through the Arts & Civilization app until you reach the Games department.

7. Bring Ancient Creatures to Life

If you relish viewing museum exhibits of fossils and long-extinct species, you'll honey Arts and Civilization's Run across an Aboriginal Animal feature.

This uses AR to place prehistoric beings in front of you, at their bodily size. These include the Opabinia, a 500 meg-year-old arthropod with five eyes; duck-billed, crested dinosaur the Amurosaurus; and "Hatcher", the first Triceratops ever put on display.

If you tin can't see the feature on the app'southward home screen, tap the card in the top-left corner, choose Collections, and select State Darwin Museum, which has provided virtually of the 3D images. Select an aboriginal beast, then tap View in Augmented Reality to bring it back to life.

Interact With Fine art and Culture

You could spend days exploring all the content in the Google Arts & Civilisation app. Endeavor the interactive features nosotros've highlighted to go a flavor of what to look.

Also as browsing artworks and artifacts, you should also check out the app's virtual tours of galleries, museums, and sites of cultural and historic interest. They provide you with a world of culture from the comfort of your phone.

And if you're however hungry for more than civilisation without leaving your couch, yous tin can check out some virtual field trips that brand history come alive.

9 Virtual Field Trips That Make History Come Live

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Well-nigh The Author

Robert Irvine (14 Articles Published)

Robert has been writing about the internet and computing since the days of AOL discs and Windows 98. He loves discovering new things almost the web and sharing that knowledge with other people.

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