Prisma is a
photo-editing mobile application
A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on de ...
that uses
neural networks
A neural network is a network or circuit of biological neurons, or, in a modern sense, an artificial neural network, composed of artificial neurons or nodes. Thus, a neural network is either a biological neural network, made up of biological ...
and
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
to apply artistic effects to transform images.
The app was created by Alexey Moiseenkov (russian: Алексей Моисеенков), Oleg Poyaganov, Ilya Frolov, Andrey Usoltsev, and Aram Hardy. It was launched in June 2016 as a free
mobile app
A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on d ...
. It debuted on
iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...
on Apple
App Store
An App Store (or app marketplace) is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the co ...
during the first week of June and it became the leading app at the App Store in
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
and other neighboring countries.
A week after its launch, the app received over 7.5 million downloads. It had over 1 million active users as of July 2016.
On 19 July, 2016, the developer launched a
beta version
A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...
of the app for
Android, which the developers closed a few hours later after receiving feedback from users. This version was released publicly on 24 July, 2016 on
Google Play
Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store and formerly the Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android (operating sys ...
.
In July 2016, the developer announced a video and
virtual reality
Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), educ ...
version of the app was under development.
On 7 July, 2017, Prisma launched a new app called Sticky which turns
selfies
A selfie () is a self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a digital camera or smartphone, which may be held in the hand or supported by a selfie stick. Selfies are often shared on social media, via social networking services such as Face ...
into stickers for sharing to social feeds.
History
The app was created by the team led by Alexey Moiseenkov who also founded the
Prisma Labs, based in Sunnyvale, California.
Moiseenkov previously worked at
Mail.Ru
VK, known as Mail.ru Group until 12 October 2021, is a Russian technology company. It started in 1998 as an e-mail service and went on to become a major corporate figure in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet.
VK operates an e-mail s ...
and later resigned from his job to dedicate his time to the development of the app. He has said that the development of the app took one and a half months and the team did not do anything to promote the app.
The algorithm that powers the app is based on the open source programming and algorithms behind
DeepArt
DeepArt or DeepArt.io was a website that allowed users to create artistic images by using an algorithm to redraw one image using the stylistic elements of another image. with "A Neural Algorithm of Artistic Style" a Neural Style Transfer algorith ...
.
Features
Users can upload pictures and select a variety of filters to transform the picture with an artistic effect.
At launch, the app offered twenty different filters. Additional filters are added daily. In July 2016, Moiseenkov stated that the app will offer forty filters by the end of the month.
[
The image rendering takes place in Prisma Labs' servers and uses a neural network with artificial intelligence to add the artistic effect. The result is delivered back to the user's phone. Unlike other photo editing apps, Prisma renders the image by going through different layers and recreating the image rather than inserting a layer over the image.
In August 2016, the iOS version of the app was updated to edit image offline by utilizing the phone's processor for image rendering.
]
Reception
Downloads
One week after its debut on iOS App Store, the app was downloaded over 7.5 million times and received over 1 million active users. It also became the top listed app in Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
and its neighboring countries. In the end of July 2016, it was installed over 12.5 million devices with over 1.5 million active users worldwide. According to App Annie, it was listed in the top 10 apps on the App Store in 77 different countries.
On the first day of the Android version release, it received over 1.7 million downloads with 50 million pictures processed by the app.
Research and technology
The research paper behind the Prisma App technology is called "A Neural Algorithm of Artistic Style" by Leon Gatys, Alexander Ecker and Matthias Bethge and was presented at the premier machine learning conference: Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) in 2015. The technology is an example of a Neural Style Transfer algorithm. This technology used in Prisma was developed independently and before Prisma, and both the university and the company have no affiliation with one another.
Further recent work developed by Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
, titled Perceptual Losses for Real-Time Style Transfer and Super-Resolution by Justin Johnson, Alexandre Alahi and Li Fei-Fei, has also been able to create real-time style transfer through video.
The code for the previous papers is available at no charge at GitHub
GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...
for research purposes.
See also
*Animaker
Animaker Inc. is a DIY video animation software. The software is cloud-based, and was launched in 2014. It allows users to create animated videos using pre-built characters and templates. In 2017, Animaker became the first tool to launch an an ...
*DeepArt
DeepArt or DeepArt.io was a website that allowed users to create artistic images by using an algorithm to redraw one image using the stylistic elements of another image. with "A Neural Algorithm of Artistic Style" a Neural Style Transfer algorith ...
*List of Prisma (app) filters
This is a list of filters for the photo-editing application Prisma (app), Prisma to render images with an artistic effect.
Artists
Artists represented through the app via the filters include Marc Chagall, Hokusai, Wassily Kandinsky, Roy Lichten ...
*Prequel (mobile application)
Prequel, Inc. is a US-based technology company that develops the Prequel mobile application enabling editing photos and videos with filters and effects. In February 2021, the app reached number 1 in the "Photo & Video" category of the US Apple ...
References
External links
* {{URL, http://prisma-ai.com/, Official website
2016 software
Mobile software
Photo software
Video software
IOS software
Android (operating system) software
Deep learning software applications