Painting history with just a swipe - the boon of a new app

A new app for smart phones and tablets lets users see the path a painting took  from sketches to completion, from any angle.

Repentir, the free app developed by researchers in the UK's New castle University, works with only one painting so far. It can reveal the history of "Transamerica", a new painting by artist Nathan Walsh. However, the developers believe  that the technology could soon be applied to many new paintings, and maybe even old ones. "What you could do is take the actual imagery art historians have been making of old paintings and use the app as a way to reveal them", said Jo-nathen Hook , a professor at Newcastle University.

"Transamerica" is a street scene as seen reflected in a San Francisco China town gift shop. Walsh took a photograph everyday of the unfinished canvas, starting from pencil sketches and ending in oil paint. Hook and his colleagues then compiled these photographs into layers. Repentir app users can scroll through the layers using a scroll bar, or they can rub top layers away on-screen with a finger tip , revealing the earlier work underneath. Viewers can snap a picture of the artwork from any angle as they view it in person, and the programme will recognise the picture and adjust the layers accordingly. This means that you can even get  up close and photograph just a tiny portion of the picture and the app will still recognise it, Hook said.

Source: Live Science