Selfies that look like portraits by Picasso; landscape shots of nearby vales, lakes and temples that could be mistaken for an ethereal Monet; ordinary cityscapes that can be turned whimsical in just a few seconds… the world around can now be seen through the prism of Prisma. The free photo editing app has become a worldwide phenomenon, allowing anyone with a smartphone to create works of art at the click of a button. Celebs – Priyanka Chopra, Abhishek Bachchan, Alia Bhatt, Virat Kholi, Kalidas Jayaram and the like – have gone to town with the app, as have ordinary folk, inundating social media with quirky Prisma-filtered shots and portraits.
“I like the app because the photos get a dreamy, unrealistic quality to them much like you would get when you paint. The app makes an ordinary photo look fun and unique,” says actor Neeraj Madhav.
His ‘prismified’ selfie with his trademark mop of curls in artful disarray got a whopping 18,000 likes when he posted it on Facebook. “Prisma takes digital art to a whole new level. The filters can literally transform an image into something refreshingly new and distinct every time,” he adds.
Developed by Moscow-based Prisma Labs Inc., initially only for iOS devices, Prisma went live on the Android platform a few days ago. It’s triggered the same kind of frenzy on social media as we have been seeing from iOS users in the month since the app was released. “To be honest, I was showing off. If you have an iPhone you just had to post Prisma pictures. It became a prestige issue. That said, I’m no photographer and it’s fun to apply the filters to see your photos as really cool works of art,” says engineer Aswathy Ashok, inadvertently pointing out the reason why the app became so popular.
“People always want something that someone else doesn’t have; something that is unique or limited edition. In Prisma’s case, only Apple users had access to this app initially, leaving many Android users green with envy and created a major demand for it. Many of my friends who are on Andriod would come to me for Prisma edits. That’s how high the demand was,” says Varun Naresh, an entrepreneur and techie, another one who has mastered the art of Prisma-manipulated shots. “It’s a pretty neat app with a lot of good artistic filters. It does image processing pretty well and highlights all the details,” he says.
Everyone, it appears, has an innate desire to create art. “Prisma makes it a one step process to change a very ordinary photo on a phone to look different and unique without skills or effort. Even though Prisma does not have a social media extension built into it, it makes it up with its dramatic filters,” says Akhil Vinayak Menon, IT professional and wildlife photographer.
At the moment Prisma has 29 filters, with more being added with each update. And these are not simple filters that tint the photo or fuzz the borders. “Before Prisma, there were always individual apps with a specific or a few filters that do artistic jobs, but it never used to be this good. Once Prisma came, everyone switched to it because it has so many good filters and we can even control the intensity, which is a key feature for a good result,” says Varun.
For some, Prisma has become more than just an app to make selfies look artistic. Interior designer Meera Krishna thinks that it’s a cool design tool too. “I got interested in Prisma because my Facebook and Instagram accounts were full of it. I decided to download the app and it’s turned out to be pretty cool. Now, I would love to use it for interior designing. Prisma is like super intense art work in split of a second and I have tried out a few landscape shots with some of the filters. I’m not sure about their resolution but I would love to print these out on canvas and put it up on a wall,” says Meera. Now, that’s what you call one of a kind.
Unfiltered imagination
Prisma filters appear to be more focussed on artsy, cartoon-like and film effects. For example, depending on the picture, you can get an anime effect a la Japanese cult film Princess Mononoke or turn the photo into a primary colour, non-representational form like a Piet Mondrain painting. The ‘Wave’ filter gives you the woodblock print effect of Japanese artist Hokusai’s ‘The Great Wave off Kanagawa,’ while ‘Bobbie’ is a nod to the floral swirls and colours of modern Canadian artist Bobbie Burger’s paintings. “The entire balance of the image – appearance, colour, saturation, contrast, texture, brightness, white balance – can be manipulated in one go. Owing to this, a very boring image can look unique within no time,” says Akhil.
