Prisma, makers of the deep learning-powered image app of the same name, is finally letting users create their own filters. Today, the company launched a new web application that lets people upload a sample image and create a Prisma filter based on its characteristics. At the moment, Prisma is only inviting “the most active users” to try it out, but says it’ll be opening it up to more people in the future, and porting it over to mobile too. The company has also launched an update for its iOS and Android apps called “Store” that lets users find and download new filters. (Though they’re all free to use, despite the name.)
We had a quick play around with the filter creation tool before it went live today, and although the basic premise is sound, the user experience isn’t good. For a start, analyzing each image takes time — at the minimum an hour. And although Prisma offers a bunch of sliders that let you tweak the filter (for example, you can set it to look at large-scale elements rather than smaller elements; or make colors more prominent), these controls aren’t intuitive, and weren’t even labelled in the version we played around with. Hopefully all that will improve in the future.