Photographers can now turn their photos into a disintegrating pattern of shapes — all in the name of art, of course. On Wednesday, April 26, PicsArt launched a new dispersion tool that allows users to generate an effect that scatters pixels in a customizable pattern.
The update comes after PicsArt developers started seeing users creating neat dispersion effects that made subjects appear to disintegrate into thin air — and started asking, “Can we make that simpler?” With the new dispersion tool, the effect is applied in just a few taps, including customization options.
The dispersion effect is located inside the app’s toolbox. After selecting the dispersion tool, users highlight the portion of the image to apply the effect to, drawing over the touchscreen with a finger. Then, a series of sliders adjusts the effect’s size, direction, and spread.
PicsArt says the functionality is a first for mobile editors as a simple tool that makes a previously complex edit accessible from a mobile device. “We started seeing a lot of really amazing dispersion edits being created with PicsArt,” the company said in a blog post. “We thought they were awesome. We wanted to see more. And we wanted to make it easier for you to make them. So we sat down and thought — what if we made it possible to do this in just one tap?”
According to the company, PicsArt is the number one free photo editor on the App Store, now with over 400 million downloads. The app has grown in popularity as a platform with more than just photo filters. Crop, cutout, brush, clone, and other tools give users the ability to turn photos into artistic remixes, while the PicsArt community also serves as a way to share those images or to find free-to-edit photos.
PicsArt is free to download from the App Store, Google Play, or Microsoft.