mobile apps Archives - Ahimsa Media

Prisma: Turning Photos Into Works of Art

Prisma-ing a photo of Alouette Lake.

If you have found yourself looking at all the artistic images that your friends have been sharing on social media the past few months and find yourself wishing you had such artistic talents too, I will let you in on a little secret … most of the beautiful artistic images circulating social media have been created with the aid of a mobile app, Prisma. Translation: you too can create some of these incredible works of art without attending art school.

Basically Prisma is a mobile app that provides filters to transform your photographs into works of art using the styles of famous artists such as Van Gogh, Picasso, Levitan, as well as world famous ornaments and patterns.

To use Prisma on your photos, once you’ve downloaded the app to your smartphone, simply open the app and select a photo from your camera roll or take a new photo, and then tap the different filters and watch each one transform your photo into a different work of art.

Take for example the preceding image that Lori took at Alouette Lake, by playing with it in Prisma, I transformed it into the following works of art …

Dream Filter

Waves Filter

Paper Art Filter

Coloured Sky Filter

Prisma Tips and Tricks

Prisma also allows you to manipulate the intensity of the filters by running your finger left (to increase the filter’s intensity) or right (to decrease the filter’s intensity).

If you want to see your original photo next to your new Prisma artwork, swipe downward with your finger on the image. Swiping back upwards with your finger on the image will restore just the Prisma artwork.

By clicking on the cog icon in the top corner, you can enable or disable Prisma to ‘save your original photos’ (those you take while using the app), ‘save your Prisma artwork automatically’, and ‘turn on/off the Prisma watermarks’ on your Prisma artwork.

You can also save your Prisma artwork right after creating it, by clicking on the downward arrow icon underneath the artwork after you create it, and/or share it directly to Instagram and/or Facebook by clicking on the Instagram and/or Facebook icons underneath your Prisma artwork.

Finally, if you wish to share the image elsewhere – to dropbox, via email, to Google+ or Twitter … etc – simply click on the upward arrow icon underneath your Prisma artwork.

Have fun creating … err … Prisma-ing!

Instead of sharing a whole album of photos, I’ve noticed that my kids compile their favourite shots from an event and share them as just one photo collage. It’s something they’re always excited to do when we get home. They sit on the couch and go through all the pics we took, then go about creating their work of art. I actually like this process because, rather than mindlessly uploading everything all at once to an album, they spend a long time reminiscing about the day and then enjoy a period of creativity. The App they have come to love for this is Instacollage.

This is a free App, which actually provides a lot of options within it. You start by selecting the layout you want to use. This works best if you’ve already decided on how many photos you will be using. There are standard straight line options, as well as many other interesting shape combinations.

This is only a small sampling of options. If you swipe to the right while on this screen (which you can do several times), you will have even more to choose from.

Once you’ve chosen the layout the fun begins! You upload your chosen photos either one at a time or all at once. You can resize them and move them around. You can play around with background colours and add text or special effects! You pretty much have the option to change the colour of everything.

This is the beginning of a collage I’m thinking about making to showcase all the meals I’ve cooked with pumpkin so far this year!

Adding the finishing touches is the best part. There are multiple frames to outline your collage and the kids love the ‘stick’ feature which allows you to place fun and quirky stickers anywhere you like. Decision making has never really been my thing, so I spent quite a long time creating my first Instacollage!