Do you need a new photo for your Twitter or Facebook profile? Finding the right shot can be a challenge. And especially at this time of year, when festive overindulgences could mean you’re not exactly looking your best.
You could retouch any image with a photo editor, of course, but that’s a lot of work for often unspectacular results. So it might be easier to try Perfect365, an interesting tool that can give an in-depth makeover to the faces in almost any image, with a single click.
To get started, all you have to do is open your photo, choose one of the “Instant Look” options, and Perfect365 will apply a host of tweaks all at once. Click “Natural”, say, and the program will remove blemishes, soften skin and whiten teeth. Or choosing the “Pure” option will additionally whiten skin and brighten the eyes.
Other looks focus on particular areas. So “Smoky Eyes” adds eye liner, extends eye lashes, emphasises eye colour and more.
And some options begin to stray into the area of virtual plastic surgery. Clicking “Honey”, for instance, slims the face and enhances the nose, amongst many other changes.
There are 21 “Instant Looks” to choose from. If these don’t quite suit your needs, though, you can always tweak their individual settings in the right-hand pane. So if you’re not happy with the “Slim Face” effect, say, you might adjust its intensity with a slider. And it’s just as easy to enlarge or brighten eyes, remove shine from skin, deepen a smile, apply lipstick, and more.
These generally work very well, as Perfect365 automatically detects the eyebrows, eyes, nose and mouth in up to 20 faces within any photo. If you find the effects aren’t delivering the results you were expecting, though, it’s possible that the program has made a mistake or two. Clicking the “Adjust Key Points” button will show you the data it’s using for all detected faces, and by tweaking these points manually you may be able to get working it properly again.
Once you’ve finished, the revamped photo can be saved as a graphics file, or shared directly on Twitter, Facebook or Flickr. This free version of Perfect365 will only save images of up to 600 x 600 pixels, however, fine for social networking profiles but otherwise a little small. If this is a problem, then moving to the commercial version will eliminate the restriction: the price is $29.99, and you can upgrade from within the program.