Google'due south Arts & Culture app is a miniature mobile masterpiece, which anyone with even a passing interest in art will enjoy exploring.

Launched in 2016, information technology was originally designed to complement the Google Arts & Culture website, which lets y'all almost visit thousands of galleries and museums around the world.

But the app, which you tin can download for gratis for Android and iOS, now goes far beyond that. It uses the latest technology to evangelize an immersive, educational, and entertaining art experience. Permit's take a expect at its highlights.

i. Lucifer a Selfie to a Painting

The best-known characteristic in the Google Arts & Civilization app is undoubtedly Art Selfie. Information technology finds your art lookalike among thousands of famous paintings.

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

Don't wait the results to exist verbal doppelgangers, or even anyone you've heard of (though one of our matches was 28th U.s.a. president Woodrow Wilson). Tap the motion-picture show for information about the field of study, creative person, and collection, and so tap View artwork to encounter the piece in close-upwardly detail.

Incidentally, there have been complaints in the Play Store that Art Selfie no longer works, but but hangs. We also had this problem, until we switched from cellular to Wi-Fi, which kicked it into action.

two. Transform Your Photos Into Artworks

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

Select Art Transfer in the camera menu, and so either capture a photo or apply an existing ane from your phone. Tap ane of the thumbnails of classic paintings and historic artifacts, and Google will use its AI to apply that style.

Options include Edvard Munch'due south The Scream, Claude Monet'southward Ninfee Rosa, Jean-Michel Basquiat'southward Man from Naples, and cocky portraits by Andy Warhol, Frida Kahlo, and Vincent Van Gogh.

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

three. Insert Yourself Into Works of Art

Google Arts & Culture is also one of the all-time augmented reality apps. You can run across this in the Art Filter tool, which uses AR to plow you lot into a living work of art.

Select Art Filter in the camera menu, then choose one of the five artifacts or paintings. These include a Japanese Samurai helmet from the 19th century, Van Gogh'south Cocky Portrait (again), and Vermeer'due south Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Tap Try filter to actuate your photographic camera and apply the filter, Snapchat-manner. It will conform to the position of your head and even your facial expression. Tap the circle to have a photograph or hold information technology down to record a video.

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

four. Project Artwork Effectually Your Domicile

You probably don't have $lxxx meg to spend on a Monet for your kitchen, so Google Arts & Culture lets you hang archetype paintings for costless. It uses augmented reality to project full-size versions of masterpieces anywhere in your home.

Press the photographic camera icon and tap Art Projector. Bespeak your camera at the floor, move information technology in a round motion, and a grid of dots will show y'all where the projection will appear.

You tin can then choose one of fifty famous artworks, including Edward Hopper'southward Nighthawks, Grant Woods's American Gothic, and Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

Equally if by magic, the bodily-size painting will appear in front end of you on a stand. Tap the frame icon in the bottom-right corner to hang the moving-picture show on a virtual wall. Walk towards an artwork to examine it in detail, as if it were really in front of yous.

Art Projector is as well bachelor for thousands of other paintings in the Arts & Culture app. Just look for the View in Augmented Reality option.

Yous tin utilize the Arts & Culture app'southward brilliant Pocket Gallery characteristic to explore some of the globe's best art without leaving your habitation.

Select Pocket Gallery in the camera menu, so signal your camera at a apartment, well-lit surface and move your phone effectually slowly. As with Fine art Projector, a grid of dots will highlight the augmented reality surface area.

Cull a virtual gallery from 9 options including Come across Vermeer, The Art of Color, and Chauvet Cavern. The size and calibration of these tours means you'll need to download them first, but this also makes them easy to revisit.

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

The name of the artwork and artist will appear as you "approach" a piece. You can also reverse-pinch your screen to zoom in and examine the craftsmanship.

6. Play Art-Themed Games

Although y'all can attempt Google Arts & Culture's games on its website, borer your phone'due 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 20 famous paintings and photos, which you can colour in using the palette of your choice. Just option a color and then tap a segment of the picture to make full it in. You can salve and share the upshot.

Puzzle Political party creates jigsaws from hundreds of artworks, which you tin can either solve yourself or collaborate on with friends. Just press the puzzle pieces and motility 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 by Van Gogh and Gauguin.

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

7. Bring Ancient Creatures to Life

If you enjoy viewing museum exhibits of fossils and long-extinct species, you'll love Arts and Culture's Meet an Aboriginal Animal characteristic.

This uses AR to place prehistoric beings in front of y'all, at their actual size. These include the Opabinia, a 500 million-year-old arthropod with 5 eyes; duck-billed, crested dinosaur the Amurosaurus; and "Hatcher", the commencement Triceratops ever put on display.

If you can't see the feature on the app's home screen, tap the menu in the elevation-left corner, choose Collections, and select State Darwin Museum, which has provided most of the 3D images. Select an aboriginal animate being, and so tap View in Augmented Reality to bring it dorsum to life.

Collaborate With Art and Culture

You lot could spend days exploring all the content in the Google Arts & Culture app. Try the interactive features nosotros've highlighted to get a flavour of what to expect.

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

And if you're still hungry for more civilisation without leaving your couch, you lot can check out some virtual field trips that make history come up live.

9 Virtual Field Trips That Make History Come up Alive

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About The Author

Robert Irvine (14 Articles Published)

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

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