Top 10 apps for the perfect selfie: Facetune, More Beaute, CameraBag
As self-obsessed, vain and narcissistic millennials we have no excuses when it comes to producing sub-standard selfies.
Gone are the days of holding up a blurry camera phone and giving it your best cheesy grin, there are all kinds of different apps available now to crop out your laundry hanging in the background, blur out slight imperfections and even change the shape of your features if they’ve been bugging you.
It all sounds a little creepy, but as more and more people start snapping selfies (we’re looking at you Obama and Prince Andrew) the less seriously we’re all taking them. They’re vain, they’re annoying, they’re probably heavily edited, but we just can’t stop taking them and neither can anyone else.
Here at ShinyShiny we’ve been snapping selfies like crazy (all in the name of research, of course) to bring you our top ten favourite apps for getting the right angle, editing and tweaking them. Watch us talk you through our best four in the video above, or take notes from the list below if you’re after heavy-duty editing.
Do you have a favourite app for selfie-editing? Let us know what it is in the comments below.
CameraBag may not be the prettiest of applications, but it allows you to make a bunch of basic changes to your images and, most importantly, provides you with a huge bank of amazing filters.
The great thing about CameraBag is that each of its filters come with an intensity slider. This means you can customise each filter and only add it ever so slightly if you want more subtle effects.
This is good news for selfie-lovers, as some of the filters on their own would be too intense and make your skin look funny. On the other hand, a slight film over your face is just what your hungover eyes need.
Aviary
Aviary is a really comprehensive photo editing app. You can do everything from making basic tweaks, like cropping and brightness enhancing, through to adding filters and blurring out certain areas of your images.
It’s a perfect one for selfies, because you can make the tone, brightness and saturation of your photos more flattering, remove blemishes, banish redeye and even whiten your smile.
Aviary is free, but you can pay extra to unlock more filters. There’s actually a “portrait” set for £1.49 that would be worth the investment if you’re looking for more filters than Instagram has to offer.
Selfie Cam claims to be the “ultimate” selfie app because it allows you to set a timer so you take your selfie at the right second and then add stickers and all kinds of crazy things to your photos. This app is much more about being silly and having fun rather than editing your face within an inch of your life, which makes it one of our favourites.
If you’re serious about selfie-editing then you really need to add Facetune to your bank of apps.
This powerful app, built especially for portrait editing, allows you to even out your skin tone, whiten your smile, reshape your face, remove dark circles, get rid of blemishes and even add more hair to your head.
Chances are your selfie will be completely unrecognisable after 15 minutes alone with Facetune, but it’s actually quite fun to be given the power of a retoucher with just your mobile phone.
Front Flash
Front Flash is ideal for those situations when you’ve just got to take a selfie OMG it’s too much, but the lighting is bad.
Now of course you can’t take a selfie in complete darkness and expect this app to work it’s magic, but it does make your photos a little bit better than a full-on flash, which can be really unflattering.
We’ve added Instagram to the list because it’s often cast aside as a photo editing app nowadays and just used as a way to share images.
Instagram actually has a bunch of great filters and its new contrast sliding feature means you have more control over the intensity of your selfies.
CamMe
CamMe is less about editing your selfies after you’ve taken them and more about perfecting your selfie technique to begin with.
Simply place your phone wherever you like, show the camera your palm, make a fist when you’re ready to be papped and pose. CamMe will then take a photo a few seconds later, providing you with a countdown.
The whole idea behind CamMe is you’ll get a much more flattering selfie if your camera is just a little bit further away from you, which is totally true and also gets rid of that weird, unflattering, big arm thing you get when you hold your phone.
Photofy isn’t really about taking or editing selfies, but using this app you can add all kinds of things to your photos afterwards. You can choose from huge, themed stickers (we don’t recommend you do that) or you can just use the app to add simple captions.
It beats other caption and text adding apps because there are so many more options to customise everything you’ve added to your selfie.
MoreBeaute
One of the most vain (and slightly troubling) apps on the list, MoreBeaute has one job and that’s to make you more beautiful.
According to the developers behind MoreBeaute, more beautiful means dreamy blurred skin, lots of light and low saturation.
Frontback
Frontback is a little different to the other apps on the list. Sure it takes your selfie for you, but it also utilises the back camera in order to capture what you were looking at and where you were when you took your selfie.
Granted the trend to take a selfie AND your surroundings might not really catch on and isn’t really Instagram-friendly given its final shape, but it is a pretty cool idea we’ll be trying as we wander around London this weekend.
