Beauty Apps Now Allow You to Photoshop Yourself

By Kelly Faircloth  |  July 21, 2014 | 11:15pm
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Wishing you had more pronounced cheekbones? Sighing over your lack of anime-like eyes? Well, there is a new app that’ll allow you to play plastic surgeon with your very own visage.

The Daily Dot profiles the very latest in face-fixing technology: Beauty Mirror, made by ModiFace. Of course there are numerous apps that allow you to fuss with your photos before uploading ’em to Instagram, for instance. Beauty Mirror is interesting because it claims to touch you up in real time. You can apply anti-aging effects or contour your jaw, then save the results. You can even record the process; here’s the Daily Dot reporter trying it on for size:

It’s not magic, but it’s subtle and reasonably effective. Oh, and totally dumb. What’s the point?

As the Dot points out, the app is more product placement than anything else. It’s a toy to demonstrate what ModiFace can do for cosmetics companies like Sephora. (They already make a virtual try-before-you-buy mirror for the company.) I’m not just extrapolating, here. That’s exactly what Parham Aarabi, the company’s CEO, told Reuters:

In addition to enhancing self-portraits, Aarabi said the company plans to use the technology to help skin care and cosmetic companies to showcase their products.
“Selfie apps have become all the rage. The ability to change 2-D photos before uploading them to Facebook has been really popular, but now people can take video and touch it up using the app too,” he said.

It’s got pretty obvious applications for plastic surgeons, too; an app is more appealing that someone doodling a bunch of lines on your face and babbling about fat deposits. (I assume that’s what plastic surgeons talk about; I’m going on Botched clips, here.)

“They look the same but everything is just a little better – their wrinkles are gone, their eyes are retouched,” explained Aarabi. Heaven forbid anyone appear on a public social network with wrinkles—or, worse, in public. Better pull out your wallet and order some $250 miracle serum from Sephora!

 
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