5 of the greatest apps for selfie lovers

There are three ingredients to a good selfie: a good camera, a photogenic model, and a fine selfie app. Arguably, the third element is the easiest to find, due to the sheer abundance of photo editing apps inside the major app stores. It's hard to weed out the great ones among all the wannabe apps, but if you take the time to do it, you can strike gold. As smartphones processing power increases, so does the potential of retouching apps, and right now, we've reached a point where achieving near fashion magazine cover results is possible with just a few taps. What used to require considerable time invested in learning Photoshop is now available to smartphone users, mostly free of charge. How great is that?


Without further ado, here are five essential apps for selfie lovers that contain all the editing and sharing functionality you possibly want.

5 of the greatest apps for selfie lovers

1. Facetune (Android, iOS)

Facetune wants to bring pro-grade retouching features to selfie enthusiasts looking after a fashion magazine-like result. You can go as far as rendering yourself un-recognizable. Widen or refine your smile, whiten and brighten your teeth, smooth out your skin, brighten dark circles under your eyes or heck, straight-up change your eye color; edit your hair, reshape your facial structure (jaw bones, cheeks, nose, etc.), apply virtual makeup, add special filters and effects to backgrounds, and share the end result with everyone on social networks. Basically, when it comes to mobile face retouching, Facetune is the flagship app!

2. Retrica (Android, iOS)

Retrica is about turning your selfies into actual artistic expressions. It lets you embellish your photographs with over 100 filters, previewing them before you make a snap. You can add vignette borders with the touch of a button, set the timer interval, and take consecutive photos using the collage feature. Subjects can be placed in and out of focus at your will, and your photos can be uploaded to your favorite social networking sites.

3. Photo Editor by Aviary (Android, iOS)

Aviary is a powerful photo editor app that is, in fact, so powerful that Adobe just straight up bought it! Don't worry, though, it's still the same app, despite it hitting big time. Its feature set includes one-tap auto enhance, pretty photo effects and frames, fun stickers, color balance and cropping utilities, drawing, adding text, and much welcome cosmetic tools, such as fix redeye effect, remove blemishes, and whiten teeth.

4. Perfect365 (Android, iOS)

Perfect365 is about quick and natural-looking touch-ups for things like bad skin or poor make-up days. There are more than 20 powerful beautification features at your disposal, such as new colors for eyes, cheeks and lips. Or different lashes and liners. Reshape the contour of your face, whiten teeth, sculpt eyebrows, banish blemishes, and do whatever else your imagination comes up with! There's even the new Mirror feature, which lets you try make-up live. Perfect365 uses sophisticated facial recognition technology to map out your face in your photo, letting you adjust the key points yourself to get your photo editing just right.

5. Photo Wonder (Android & iOS)

The Photo Wonder camera provides real-time effects and makes it easier for you to take beautiful pictures. One can crop and rotate photos, as well as adjust their brightness, contrast and saturation as they wish. Beautification options include changing skin tone, face polish, acne removal, eye enlargement, and slimming. Photos can be enhanced with cool effects, such as soft light, LOMO, autumn effect, blue tone, old photo, and others. PhotoWonder also integrates interesting stamps and fashion text material, and lets users make collages and photo walls! There's more where that came from, as stuffing gobs of functionality into its apps is very typical of Baidu.

Download: Android | iOS