You know all these artsy apps that apply a heavy filter to your photo and stylize it like a painting done by a famous painter? You know, the the trend that was started by Pikazo, Prisma, then there were Lucid and countless others. The apps from the first wave only worked if you uploaded your source photo to their cloud, then waited for some time for the in-house server to re-do your picture and send it back to you.In more recent reincarnations of these apps, the algorithms have been simplified, and the transformation happens in real time, straight on your phone. In fact, they are so fast now that the filters can be applied to video, too.

Well, Google seems to be interested in entering this niche and expanding the features even further. Posted on the Google Developers blog, we can now see a project, made by Google's own coders, that employs light and flexible algorithms, which allow you to choose from a number of painting styles, mix, combine, and match them all in real time. A few sliders allow you to control the influence of each "style", giving you a vast array of possible combinations.

There is no mention of possible app, but we wouldn't be surprised if the art-style filters pop up in Google Photos sooner or later.

Do you use Prisma-like apps?

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