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We live in the age of the selfie, when pouting into one’s iPhone camera is as commonplace as Snapchatting your sleeping cat or Facebook-stalking your secondary school crush.
The Kardashian-Jenner clan are the unashamed royalty of selfies, scoring millions of Instagram followers on the power of their faces alone.
Can mere mortals recreate a flawless, Kardashian-worthy selfie with a helping hand from the latest beautifying apps? Our reporter Claire Hubble put six face-tuning apps to the test.
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Price: Free
Available on: iOs App Store, Google Play, Microsoft Store
Kardaishian factor: 4/5
I’ve heard that Kylie J actually uses Perfect 365 to get her selfies looking “on fleek” so I was expecting big things from this app. It did not disappoint. Perfect 365 uses automatic face detection to figure out where your facial features are, with the option to reposition those markers manually if it doesn’t get things quite right the first time.
You can try out different makeup combinations, which is pretty fun (orange eyeshadow and bright pink lips, anyone?), or just to enhance any makeup you already have on. The best part of Perfect 365 is the skin editing options – you can soften, brighten and remove blemishes for a glow Kimmy K would be proud of.
Price: Free
Available on: iOs App Store, Google Play
Kardaishian factor: 3.5/5
With MakeUp you have to manually outline the shape of your eyes, eyebrows and mouth before you get started, which is both a blessing and a curse; it’s a bit fiddly but the results are precise (you won’t end up with an eyelash drawn in the middle of your eyeball). I tried over-lining the lips to give me an exaggerated pout a la Kylie J, but it wasn’t a great look on me (unless clowns are the next big thing in beauty).
I wasn’t totally impressed with the foundation, concealer, highlight and contour features as the app confused my pale face with my pale hair and I ended up with some orange blobs in my barnet, but the eye features are fantastic. The eyeliner, shadow and mascara all look pretty realistic and there’s an eyelash feature to give a touch of feminine flutter to your selfies.
Price: Free
Available on: iOs App Store
Kardaishian factor: 3/5
Those Kardashians are forever showing off their famous curves in mirror selfies, so I thought I’d follow suit in the changing rooms of Urban Outfitters. Photo Plastic lets you trim off excess width from your hips, cinch in your waist, scale down your arms and elongate your legs. I guess this is what I would look like if I didn’t eat an entire sharing bag of Doritos to myself so often.
The face retouching and skin-editing features really didn’t work for me, as elongating and slimming my head just made me look like an alien, but the body-editing features were easy to use and kind-of believable.
Price: Free
Available on: iOs App Store
Kardaishian factor: 1/5
I thought this app might give me the little Kardashian nose and plump lips I’d always dreamed of, but no such luck. I attempted to create larger lips without the help of a syringe and dermal fillers, but it’s difficult not to end up looking like an alien. Not hot.
Price: £2.99
Available on: iOs App Store, Google Play, Microsoft Store
Kardaishian factor: 5/5
Not all of us can splash out £5,000 for reconstructive surgery like a rhinoplasty (after all there are far more important things like sharing bags of Doritos to be bought), but for £2.99 you can straighten out crooked noses, shave off face fat, make your cheek bones more prominent and enlarge eyes. You can also undo the damage of all those cups of coffee and glasses of red wine with a few swipes of the tooth whitening feature, and blur away any fine lines, wrinkles or spots.
Price: Free
Available on: iOs App Store
Kardaishian factor: 3/5
This one pretty much does what it says on the tin – it gives your bod an instant slimmer appearance. Forget slogging it out at the gym when you can give yourself the long, slender pins and nipped in waist without having to go within a ten-mile radius of the treadmill. This app also comes with a double chin “feather” feature and a thin head function, for when your neck lets the whole side down.
The only downside to this app is that I think it looks kind of obvious the photo has been tampered with. The sink, tiles and mirror all look like they’re being involuntarily sucked into me like I’ve got an irresistible gravitational pull. Which I guess is kind of a weirdly poetic way to describe the Kardashians.
