Forget FaceApp, this tool turns your face into a masterpiece

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Apps that change your face are all the rage at the minute. From animal filters to tools that make you look thirty years older, there's no shortage of portraiture fun to be had. But the site AI Portraits Ars goes further than other photo editing apps by completely redesigning your face, and shows you what you would look like as a Renaissance painting.

The results are truly stunning, and have taken social media by storm as people upload their photos to see what they would look like if they were painted by Rembrandt, Caravaggio or Titian.

And if you want to have a go, it's really simple. Just take a selfie, save it to your device, then head over to AI Portraits Ars. All you have to do then is upload your photo, and let the website work its magic. (We say magic, we really mean extremely complicated Generative Adversarial Network models that can reproduce portraits with different styles and levels of abstraction.)

We gave it a go in the office, and here's a taste of how AI Portraits Ars can transform a photo into a classical piece of art.

What do you mean "he's no oil painting"?

Part of the appeal with AI Portraits Ars is that you have no control over the process. The 4K resolution portraits are redesigned by the GAN models, which use data from the photo to decide on a style. If you don't like the result, tough.

This also means that AI Portraits Ars is more sophisticated than your bog-standard app, which likely uses a style transfer edit.

"In style transfer, there is usually a strong alteration of colors, but the features of the photo remain unchanged," the site explains. "AI Portraits Ars creates new forms, beyond altering the style of an existing photo."

Just take a look at the incredible work it's capable of:

And before you attack AI Portraits Ars for merely being a front for data harvesting, relax. The site's privacy policy explains that you can upload your photo without having to worry about it being passed on.

"Your photos are sent to our servers to generate portraits," it says. "We won’t use data from your photos for any other purpose and we'll immediately delete them."

So what are you waiting for, head on over and see how you'd look if you were painted by a Renaissance artist. And if you want to have a go at image editing yourself, check out our guide to the best digital art software available right now.

Related articles:

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• Tackle portrait painting with oils

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