Ladies, this one is for you – a selection of free (or freemium) beautifying apps for iOS and Android that will make your selfies look just the way you want them.
If you wonder how come some of your less attractive friends end up looking a lot better than you when they take selfies, the answer may be they are using some of these or similar mobile apps designed to help people look better.
I believe people are generally born good-looking, but the way we live, eat, work and sleep affects our health and looks in negative ways. You could as well move from Manhattan to a quiet village in Brazil or Panama; change a stressful job in an office to something most probably less profitable, but a lot more peaceful; sleep and eat right; work out; meditate; and your pimples and dark circles under the eyes will vanish without a trace. Nevertheless, it is easier to buy a ton of expensive make-up, and use these free apps to make yourself look better as you aspire to find a Tinder date.
Use these apps with caution, though. For one, do not abuse the filters because you will run the risk of making the resulting images look way too artificial, and no one will buy the bait. Another reason to use the apps with moderation is you will eventually have to go on a date, and someone who bought your beautified selfie may notice the discrepancies.
Instagram [iOS, Android]
This is probably one of the most popular image editing and sharing app that offers a lot of photo effects and filters that can beautify your images in profound ways. All you need to do is just read the filters descriptions, because there are plenty of things it can do. For example, Amaro filter lightens up the entire image, effectively smoothing the skin color and hiding the imperfections, and dark circles. It makes the eyes look more expressive, while the image itself looks a lot more sharp than the original snapshot.
The Walden filter adds your image an airy touch by adding a hue of blue to it. Alternatively, you could use the Rise filter to add a slightly yellowish tone to your skin, and a slightly reddish hue to your light hair. You can also blur, sharpen or frame your image among other things.
Users advise against using the high contrast as a way to enhance portraits because it may make you look sick, whereas Instagram make-up is the classic representation of a mobile digital beautifying tool. It may be widely known by some, but inexperienced folks buy the bait in the form of Instagram-retouched selfies time and time again.
Photo Wonder [Android, iOS]
This little app may be styled as a pinky girlish kind of Vanilla Ice Cream toy, but don’t be fooled by the hearts and teddy bears. Despite its reckless looks, Photo Wonder is a powerful toolbox that will fix skin imperfections, make your eyes look more expressive and even apply virtual makeup. It also has numerous filters you can apply, collage maker, photo frames, and a lot of fun stickers.
The application does quite a lot. In fact, not only it will make your face look prettier, it can also magnify your breasts, retouch the skin imperfections automatically, make your eyes wider, eliminate dark circles from under your eyes and “slim” the image. The app identifies the location of the mouth, the eyes and the breasts automatically, which effectively enables you to apply virtual makeup – lipstick, mascara, you name it. You have to measure the amount of artificiality you add, though, but the app displays pretty impressive results.
There is a separate tool to delete pimples that evens up and smooths the selected areas to match the surrounding skin color. Filters are worth mentioning too – there is a great variety of portrait, art and landscape filters for you to toy with. Additionally, you can add large variety of virtual accessories to the image – glasses, brooches, mustache, ties and the like, but don’t expect all that stuff to look naturally. The app also enables users to save the result to Image Gallery or share the images on social networks.
Beauty Booth [Android, iOS]
This is yet another free Asian styled app that can automatically enhance an otherwise ordinary selfie. It sports a lot of functions that are similar to the above-mentioned Photo Wonder, but also offers several of its own nifty features, for example, it adds a little sparkle in your eyes. The user can select shape of these light spots and their intensity, after which the app automatically fills the eye centers with the selected “sparkle.” If you make it too bright, you run the risk of looking like an anime character, whereas if you measure your sparkle somewhere in the middle, the artificiality in the image will not be obvious whatsoever, but the eyes will look a lot more expressive.
The skin fix filters work like charm – wrinkles, dark circles and pimples are gone for good. Unfortunately, only on the selfies. There are a few dozen frames, stickers, hearts and all those overly cute girlish accessories.
In-app purchases unlock a number of additional features and accessories, while the resulting images can be saved, and shared via Instagram, as well as many popular social networks.
MeituPic [Android, iOS]
If you don’t get easily scared off by a foreign language, this free Chinese app may actually do the job for you. The app’s icons are quite self-descriptive, so everything is quite clear without the translation. The app has in-built filters – bright and vivid, which will appeal to those who are bored with the Insta-images results, where the novelty already wore off.
Additionally, it has quite smooth and natural-looking filters to fix the skin, and change the lip color in very natural ways. You can also fix the skin imperfections manually using the brush tool, as well as add signatures, blur and so on.
