Microsoft takes your selfies seriously
Good news has come for selfie enthusiasts. iPhone users now have another photography app targeted at taking selfies. Released by Microsoft, the new app, unambiguously titled “Microsoft Selfie” allows users to take selfies and edit them before sharing with friends or via social media.
Both a camera and photo-editing tool, the app is specifically designed to take selfies. According to Microsoft, it’s powered by software which enables it to ‘intelligently’ enhance images. Working with your front-facing camera, the app promises to up your selfie game by improving images in a number of ways such as automatically adjusting exposure and reducing noise.
How the Microsoft Selfie app does its magic
When making its adjustments, the app also takes into account a variety of other factors including age, gender, skin tone, and lighting to help you make sure your selfie game is on point. These enhancements are combined with filters, such as ‘Cool’ and ‘1965,’ for an overall color theme. E
ach theme changes the overall color of the photo. The intensity of the effect applied to your photo can be adjusted using a slider. You can also apply all of these changes to existing photos in your library as well as stuff you shoot on the fly. While you can’t specifically airbrush a particular spot with the app, it’s useful for a quick overall edit.
Before saving the final photo to your camera roll, you can quickly view your original image without the edits by tapping and holding the ‘Compare’ button. Once satisfied with your selfie, you can save it to your camera roll to share with friends later on.
Microsoft may be onto something
Selfies are getting more and more popular, so it’s not a bad idea to make them look better as well as easier to capture. Although, it’s not Microsoft’s first foray into analyzing selfies. Earlier this year, the tech giant released How-old.net which got people really into having a computer guess their age. Microsoft also released an emotion detector that was pretty good at guessing people’s moods.
Ready to take your own selfie? You can head over to iTunes and download the Microsoft Selfie app now.
#MicrosoftSelfie
Nichole earned a Master's in Sociology from Texas State University and has publications in peer-reviewed journals. She has spent her career in tech and advertising. Her writing interests include the intersection of tech and society. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Communication and Media Studies at Murdoch University.
