Courtesy of Pikazo
Courtesy of Pikazo
Courtesy of Pikazo
Courtesy of Pikazo
Courtesy of Pikzao
Courtesy of Pikazo
Courtesy of Pikazo
Courtesy of Pikazo
Forget filters. Two St. Louisans have discovered a new way to digitally alter your photos to make them look like works of art, literally.
Introducing Pikazo, the photo remixing app that uses next-generation neural networks to create image mashups between your photos and any other image. The options for mashups are unlimited: Putin made out of Poutine? Sure. John Lennon in lemons? Easy. Snoop Dog’s face in marijuana? Naturally.
But so far, Picasso, Klimt and Van Gogh seem to be three of the most popular styles.
“Here’s an app that lets anybody, literally anybody, get painted by the brush strokes of Van Gogh,” says co-founder Noah Rosenberg to SLM. “Who in history has had the opportunity to be painted by the best painters ever? And now we’re seeing it in an Instagram feed.”
Not feeling the fine arts vibe? The app’s simulated visual cortex can also combine a selfie with a photo of pizza for the most ‘za-riffic profile pic ever. This option (inspired by the below tweet) was so popular that Pikazo tried adding “pizza” to the list of artistic styles users can choose from.
Pikazo is simple to use: Buy the app from the Apple store for $2.99, upload a photo, choose a style and click “Paint!”
But the science behind it is harder to grasp. Even co-founders (and St. Louisans) Rosenberg and Karl Stiefvater say they don’t totally understand how it works.
“Anybody who says they do understand it is not being honest,” Stiefvater tells SLM. “It’s very incomprehensible, literally. It’s based on a structure of the human brain we don’t understand. We can simulate it, but we can’t really predict what will happen.”
Neural network technology blossomed last summer when Google launched its deep dream visualization tool. (Check out photos SLM made with it in the story linked below.) Pikazo takes Google’s tool one step further by letting users combine photos and choose their styles.
See also: PHOTOS: Google Deep Dream Makes St. Louis Look Terrifyingly Magical
If there’s anyone who should understand how it all works, it’s Stiefvater, who graduated from SLUH and Washington University to become the image scientist who created landmark visuals from the Myst games, The Matrix films and even the movie 300. (Remember the endless pit Gerard Butler kicks a guy into while screaming, “This is Sparta”? Stiefvater is the guy who made that pit.)
Created via Pikazo by Lindsay Toler
A selfie by the author recreated with Pikazo in the styles of Van Gogh's "Starry Night" (L) and Picasso's colorful cubism (R).
Still, the technology is new enough that Stiefvater says it still doesn’t technically seem possible.
“It doesn’t seem reasonable that you can say, ‘Make this picture look like this painting.’ That’s not a command people expect computers to be able to satisfy. And yet it was,” Stiefvater tells SLM.
So far, the app has been a strong success. When the app first launched, “we thought maybe we were going to get 50 downloads,” Rosenberg remembers. “We were off by many orders of magnitude.”
A few weeks in, Pikazo has already processed more than 100,000 images, racking up more than a million minutes of computer time. This week, a new update will let users share photos to social networks from the app.
And while watching their new app become ever more popular is fun, Rosenberg and Stiefvater say the real joy is watching people discover their inner muse.
“This is an app that really turns anybody into an artist,” Rosenberg says.
Stiefvater adds: “Now they don’t have to practice painting for 20 years to execute the idea.”
Contact Lindsay Toler by an email at LToler@stlmag.com or on Twitter @StLouisLindsay. For more from St. Louis Magazine, subscribe or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
