Microsoft Garage joined the face swapping app last month with its app for Android. On the surface, it doesn't appear to do anything its competitors can't. Under the hood, however, is the company's heavily researched face recognition technology and its Bing Image search tech.
The result is arguably more accurate than other apps, automatically finding faces in images and matching skin tone, lighting, and more.
As of yesterday, that functionality is now available to iPhone, iPad, and iPod users. The only caveat is that you need to be on iOS 8 or higher.
Face Swap Features
For users new to the app, here's a quick rundown of all the features it provides:
- “Choose a scene:
- Pick an image with faces from your camera roll
- Choose a scene from one of our fun categories
- Search for an image with Bing-powered image search
- Search for trending faces and scenes!
- Choose a face:
- Take a great selfie with our special face swap camera with real-time hints and instructions
- Pick an image from your camera roll
- Search for a face on the web
- You can swap any face into any picture.
- Using a sophisticated face swap engine, we:
- Match skin tone (or any tone…Try a stone statue!)
- Automatically find faces in images and place your swap
- Match lighting conditions
- Match head turns and tilts
- Process and place multiple faces in a single scene”
Of course, its mostly a novelty app, but Microsoft has taken steps to keep it interesting. Categories are updated frequently to reflect the latest trends and settings. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any major additions in the iOS port, but that will likely change in the coming weeks.
You can download the app for iOS here and Android here.