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

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

But the app, which yous tin download for costless for Android and iOS, now goes far beyond that. It uses the latest technology to deliver an immersive, educational, and entertaining art experience. Let'southward have a look at its highlights.

1. Match a Selfie to a Painting

The best-known feature in the Google Arts & Culture app is undoubtedly Art Selfie. It finds your art lookalike among thousands of famous paintings.

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

Don't expect the results to exist exact doppelgangers, or even anyone you've heard of (though ane of our matches was 28th United states of america president Woodrow Wilson). Tap the motion picture for information about the subject area, creative person, and drove, then tap View artwork to see the piece in shut-upwards detail.

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

2. Transform Your Photos Into Artworks

Even more fun than Art Selfie is the Art Transfer feature. This turns your photos into works of art in the mode of specific painters.

Select Art Transfer in the camera carte, then either capture a photo or use an existing i from your phone. Tap i of the thumbnails of classic paintings and historic artifacts, and Google will use its AI to use 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.

You tin can apply a way to but part of your photograph 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 also one of the best augmented reality apps. You tin can run into this in the Art Filter tool, which uses AR to plough you into a living piece of work of fine art.

Select Fine art Filter in the camera bill of fare, then choose one of the 5 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 activate your camera and utilise the filter, Snapchat-style. It will accommodate to the position of your head and even your facial expression. Tap the circle to take a photo or concur it downwards to tape a video.

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

4. Project Artwork Around Your Dwelling

You probably don't have $80 million to spend on a Monet for your kitchen, and then Google Arts & Culture lets you hang classic paintings for free. It uses augmented reality to project full-size versions of masterpieces anywhere in your home.

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

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

As if by magic, the actual-size painting volition announced in forepart of you lot on a stand. 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, as if it were really in forepart of y'all.

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

You can use the Arts & Culture app'south bright Pocket Gallery feature to explore some of the world'southward best art without leaving your dwelling house.

Select Pocket Gallery in the camera card, then point your camera at a apartment, well-lit surface and motion your telephone effectually slowly. As with Art Projector, a grid of dots will highlight the augmented reality expanse.

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 ways you lot'll demand to download them first, but this also makes them easy to revisit.

Press Enter to pace 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 around.

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

6. Play Art-Themed Games

Although you 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 example, Art Coloring Book offers monochrome outlines of more than xx famous paintings and photos, which yous tin colour in using the palette of your choice. Just pick a color so tap a segment of the picture to make full it in. You can salve and share the issue.

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

In that location'due south likewise Visual Crosswords, which challenges you to group thumbnail images by theme, such every bit Contemporary and Renaissance art, or paintings by Van Gogh and Gauguin.

To play these games and more than, keep scrolling through the Arts & Culture app until you attain the Games section.

seven. Bring Ancient Creatures to Life

If yous enjoy viewing museum exhibits of fossils and long-extinct species, you lot'll beloved Arts and Culture's Run into an Ancient Brute feature.

This uses AR to place prehistoric beings in front of you, at their bodily size. These include the Opabinia, a 500 1000000-yr-old arthropod with five eyes; duck-billed, crested dinosaur the Amurosaurus; and "Hatcher", the first Triceratops always put on display.

If you lot tin't run into the feature on the app's domicile screen, tap the carte in the top-left corner, choose Collections, and select Land Darwin Museum, which has provided about of the 3D images. Select an aboriginal brute, and then tap View in Augmented Reality to bring information technology dorsum to life.

Interact With Art and Culture

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

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

And if y'all're nonetheless hungry for more than culture without leaving your couch, you tin can check out some virtual field trips that make history come alive.

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9 Virtual Field Trips That Brand History Come up Live

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Robert Irvine (14 Articles Published)

Robert has been writing about the net and calculating since the days of AOL discs and Windows 98. He loves discovering new things near the spider web and sharing that knowledge with other people.

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