Prisma adds art filtered video, GIFs coming next

Art filter photo app Prisma is adding a big new feature to its iOS app in an update landing today: support for videos.

The app, which lets people turn their selfies into cartoonies by using deep learning algorithms to process photos in various graphic styles, quickly surged to millions of downloads in a viral splash after launching this summer. And just as quickly spawning a rash of fast following clones.

As well as creating arty selfies, users of the Prisma iPhone app can now turn snippets of video up to 15 second long into playable animations by selecting one of the nine filter styles currently available — and waiting for the app’s AI algorithms to weave a frame by frame transformation.

Videos can be recorded in the app or selected for processing from the camera roll. You’ll need iOS 10 for Prisma video to work, and a little patience as it can take more than a minute to process a clip depending on length, resolution and which model iPhone you’re using.

Android users will have to be more patient — as there’s still no support for video there.

Prisma says it’s planning to add offline photo processing to the Android app first, in “a week or so”, after which co-founder Aram Airapetyan says they’ll “jump on a video development”. “Android is a tough guy,” he adds.

Processing time for Prisma video on iOS is around two mins for the iPhone 6; 55-60 secs for iPhone 6s; and half a minute for iPhone 7, according to Airapetyan, although in my experience videos seemed to finish process a little quicker than that on average.

All processing is done locally on the device so expect your iPhone hardware to heat up a little as you play around with remixing videos as mosaics or Munches or manga-style cartoons.

Next up on Prisma’s iOS to-do list is adding a GIF creator — with looped video touted as coming “very soon”, aka later this month.

Source: TechCrunch