For those who are challenged at taking a selfie, Microsoft’s new app offers assistance at being picture perfect. The app, which is being called ‘Microsoft Selfie,’ uses intelligent processing software to better selfies.
Essentially, by utilizing machine learning, the app can enhance color balance, lighting, and skin tone using 13 filter options. The app takes variables like gender, age, skin tone, and lighting into account. By doing so, it can automatically enhance a selfie after each click.
“Microsoft Selfie is a selfie and portrait enhancement application,” writes Microsoft in the app description. "The app takes age, gender, skin tone, lighting, and many other variables into account, applies different models automatically and finishes enhancement with just a single click. Users can transform average photos into more presentable portraits in seconds. Key features of this application are noise reduction, intelligent enhancement, automatic exposure and color theme.”
The changes are not permanent, as users have the option to use the “compare” feature to see how their selfie would look with and without enhancements.
One of the more unique features of the app is being able to predict the subject’s age from the photograph. This feature is reminiscent of the website Microsoft launched this year called How old do I look , which used 27 points to predict a user’s age.
There are several apps on the market that aim to modify selfies but they focus on targeting specific features — you can whiten your smile, blur your skin, or clear out your skin tone. Microsoft’s new app is different in that it does not allow users to target what they modify but instead, provides general edits through themes.
