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

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

Merely the app, which you tin download for free for Android and iOS, now goes far beyond that. It uses the latest engineering science to evangelize an immersive, educational, and entertaining fine art feel. Let's take a wait at its highlights.

1. 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 discover whether y'all more closely resemble the Mona Lisa or The Laughing Cavalier, tap the camera icon and select Art Selfie. Take a photograph of your confront and Arts & Culture will locate matching portraits.

Don't look the results to be exact doppelgangers, or fifty-fifty anyone you've heard of (though one of our matches was 28th US president Woodrow Wilson). Tap the picture for information about the subject, creative person, and drove, so tap View artwork to encounter the piece in close-up detail.

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

2. Transform Your Photos Into Artworks

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

Select Fine art Transfer in the camera menu, so either capture a photo or employ an existing one from your phone. Tap 1 of the thumbnails of classic paintings and historic artifacts, and Google will utilize its AI to apply that style.

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

Y'all can apply a manner to only role of your photo by tapping the pair of scissors icon and tracing the desired area with your finger. The app also 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 as well ane of the best augmented reality apps. You lot tin can encounter this in the Art Filter tool, which uses AR to turn you into a living work of fine art.

Select Fine art Filter in the camera menu, so cull 1 of the five artifacts or paintings. These include a Japanese Samurai helmet from the 19th century, Van Gogh's Self Portrait (over again), and Vermeer'due south Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Tap Try filter to activate your photographic camera and use the filter, Snapchat-style. It will adapt to the position of your head and even your facial expression. Tap the circumvolve to take a photo or hold it down to tape a video.

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

iv. Project Artwork Around Your Home

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

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

You tin can then cull one of 50 famous artworks, including Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, Grant Wood'southward American Gothic, and Leonardo da Vinci'southward Mona Lisa.

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

Fine art Projector is also bachelor for thousands of other paintings in the Arts & Civilisation app. But await for the View in Augmented Reality option.

You can use the Arts & Culture app's vivid Pocket Gallery feature to explore some of the world's best art without leaving your home.

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

Choose a virtual gallery from nine options including Meet Vermeer, The Art of Color, and Chauvet Cavern. The size and calibration of these tours means y'all'll need to download them first, but this also makes them easy to revisit.

Press Enter to step into the gallery, where y'all can tap and swipe your screen to explore the contents of each room. Alternatively, move your phone manually to wait effectually.

The proper name of the artwork and artist will appear as yous "approach" a slice. Yous tin can also reverse-compression your screen to zoom in and examine the craftsmanship.

half dozen. Play Art-Themed Games

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

For instance, Art Coloring Book offers monochrome outlines of more than than 20 famous paintings and photos, which you can color in using the palette of your choice. Simply pick a colour then tap a segment of the picture to fill information technology in. You can salve and share the issue.

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 move them into place.

There's too Visual Crosswords, which challenges you to group thumbnail images by theme, such as Contemporary and Renaissance fine art, or paintings by Van Gogh and Gauguin.

To play these games and more, keep scrolling through the Arts & Culture app until you lot 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 Civilization'due south Run across an Ancient Animal feature.

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

If yous can't run across the feature on the app's home screen, tap the menu in the top-left corner, choose Collections, and select State Darwin Museum, which has provided most of the 3D images. Select an aboriginal beast, and 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 & Culture app. Effort the interactive features we've highlighted to get a flavor of what to expect.

As well equally 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 globe of culture from the comfort of your phone.

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

9 Virtual Field Trips That Make History Come Live

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About The Author

Robert Irvine (14 Manufactures Published)

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

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