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

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

But the app, which you can download for gratis for Android and iOS, at present goes far across that. It uses the latest engineering science to deliver an immersive, educational, and entertaining art experience. Let's take a wait at its highlights.

1. Match a Selfie to a Painting

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

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

Don't expect the results to be exact doppelgangers, or fifty-fifty anyone you've heard of (though one of our matches was 28th The states president Woodrow Wilson). Tap the picture for data near the subject, artist, and collection, and so tap View artwork to run across the piece in close-up item.

Incidentally, there have been complaints in the Play Shop that Fine art Selfie no longer works, simply just hangs. We also had this trouble, until we switched from cellular to Wi-Fi, which kicked it into action.

two. Transform Your Photos Into Artworks

Even more than 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 camera menu, so either capture a photo or utilize an existing ane from your phone. Tap one of the thumbnails of archetype paintings and historic artifacts, and Google will use its AI to use that style.

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

You tin can utilise a style to merely part of your photo by tapping the scissors icon and tracing the desired surface 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.

iii. Insert Yourself Into Works of Art

Google Arts & Civilization is besides one of the all-time augmented reality apps. Y'all can see this in the Art Filter tool, which uses AR to turn you into a living work of art.

Select Fine art Filter in the camera menu, and so choose one of the 5 artifacts or paintings. These include a Japanese Samurai helmet from the 19th century, Van Gogh's Self Portrait (over again), and Vermeer'south Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Tap Attempt filter to activate your camera and apply the filter, Snapchat-style. Information technology volition conform to the position of your caput and even your facial expression. Tap the circle to take a photo or agree it downward to tape a video.

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

four. Project Artwork Effectually Your Habitation

You probably don't have $80 one thousand thousand to spend on a Monet for your kitchen, so Google Arts & Civilisation lets you lot hang archetype paintings for free. Information technology uses augmented reality to project full-size versions of masterpieces anywhere in your home.

Press the camera icon and tap Art Projector. Point your camera at the floor, move information technology in a circular move, and a grid of dots will testify you where the project will appear.

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

As if by magic, the actual-size painting will appear in front of you lot on a stand. Tap the frame icon in the lesser-correct corner to hang the motion picture on a virtual wall. Walk towards an artwork to examine it in detail, as if information technology were really in forepart of yous.

Art Projector is also available for thousands of other paintings in the Arts & Civilization app. Just expect for the View in Augmented Reality option.

You tin utilize the Arts & Civilisation app'south bright Pocket Gallery feature to explore some of the world's best art without leaving your home.

Select Pocket Gallery in the photographic camera menu, then point your camera at a flat, well-lit surface and motility your telephone around slowly. Every bit with Art Projector, a grid of dots volition highlight the augmented reality area.

Choose a virtual gallery from nine options including Meet Vermeer, The Art of Colour, and Chauvet Cave. The size and calibration of these tours means y'all'll need to download them first, but this besides 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, movement your phone manually to wait around.

The name of the artwork and artist volition appear as you lot "approach" a piece. You tin likewise reverse-pinch your screen to zoom in and examine the adroitness.

6. Play Art-Themed Games

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

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

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

In that location's 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 than, go on scrolling through the Arts & Culture app until you reach the Games section.

7. Bring Ancient Creatures to Life

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

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

If you tin can't come 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 near of the 3D images. Select an ancient beast, then tap View in Augmented Reality to bring it back to life.

Interact With Fine art and Civilisation

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

Equally well 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 with a world of culture from the condolement of your phone.

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

ix Virtual Field Trips That Make History Come up Alive

Read Next

Most The Writer

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 about the web and sharing that knowledge with other people.

More than From Robert Irvine