Happy New Year!☺


Before school reopens tomorrow (cues crying in agony), I've decided to blog about why I think it's perfectly alright to photo edit our own pictures, as you have read from the title, be it selfies or 'groupfies'. Or is 'wefies' now, I'm not sure. Anyways, this is a topic that I've been contemplating with myself about whether or not to write about. After finishing, I then took weeks to decide if I should post it and now I'll just like to get it off my chest although I'm completely aware of all the potential hate. 

I got first got inspiration for this post from an anonymous ask.fm question so I guess I'll have to thank her! 

The mosaic part is redundant in this context.

Firstly let's go into details of WHY I edit my pictures.

I don't drastically change most parts of my appearance and make myself look slimmer (you can see what I actually do later down below) but if you do that, I still believe that it is alright.

People say altering an aspect of the photograph is called 'Photoshop' (from the Abode Photoshop software) but I prefer to use the term 'Photo Editing'. Now before you all start judging me, hear me out. Even professional photographers edit their photos. Not only do they play around with the brightness, contrast and saturation they may also make their clients look better. If you think it's merely as simple as adding a filter, you've thought wrong! No one will like to see a picture reflecting the imperfections of oneself, it's only normal!

If you're STILL feel judgemental or just simply can't understand, here are some pondering questions for you:

DO YOU AGREE THAT MOST GIRLS WANT TO LOOK PRETTIER?

WHAT GIRL (BOYS TOO) WOULDN'T WANT TO FEEL BETTER AND BE MORE CONFIDENT OF ONESELF?

IS THERE A PART(S) OF YOURSELF THAT YOU ARE INSECURE OF?

People who are rich enough to go for plastic surgery to make their nose sharper or get double eyelids, face-lift, remove eye bags and etc era. So why can't people use the gifts bestowed upon us in this 21st century to digitally change parts of them not permanently but just in the moment?

Walking along a street I bet you'll see most female (maybe male?) teenagers and adults wearing makeup to enhance their features. BB Cream, Foundation, Concealer to hide your pimples, blemishes and blackheads. Eye make up to widen our eyes and define the eyebrows. Face contouring to make parts of your face sharper. Blusher and lipstick to help look more radiant. Make up is wore in general to hide the not so nice parts of the face and show off the rest. 

I find it too troublesome to put on makeup then have to go through the tedious process of removing it entirely afterwards so if I want to look as pretty in a photo as if I was wearing make up that day I can just simply edit makeup on myself, no problem there and it's much less worrisome.

If someone can go for plastic surgery, why can't someone else alter their appearance temporarily in a photo?

If it's a norm to wear make up to hide and enhance your features, what's wrong with doing the same by editing?

Make up and plastic surgery makes one feel less insecure, more confident, happier. Some may frown upon it but after all, it's their choice, their face. Same goes for editing pictures.

Some might argue that photo editing a photo is like deceiving others but it wouldn't be if it has been outrightly admitted that the picture has been edited.

When I say that I think there is nothing wrong with editing your pictures is because I believe it's normal to want to look more beautiful. That is my opinion. HOWEVER, to lie about not doing so when you did is an entirety on it's own. I don't mind people knowing because I think it's nothing to be ashamed of but if you are scared of what people think then simply don't do it. 

Of course, to the people who have high self-esteem and are proud of the way they look, I salute you and can you teach me how you look and feel good without trying??

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Now onto the slightly more exciting and interesting part of HOW I actually edit selfies! Mainly for reasons that you can laugh at how precise I am about this and realise that editing selfies is not as bad as you might think it is! I am, of course, in no way encouraging anyone to edit their photos, but by all means they should feel free to do :)

And fine I'll post a Before-After pic just to show you that I don't look like an entire different person after editing so if you want to hate on me saying that, your argument would be invalid. Think of something else to hate on haha

And for people asking how I edit my selfies without making it look that obvious that it's edited, it took me years of learning and common sense to master it okay so I consider it a skill! I'll just share it to you step-by-step like it's a tutorial so none of you can assume that I change parts of myself that I clearly didn't.

Example of a VERY VERY VERY badly and obviously edited selfie:

The selfie itself plays a key role as there are limits to what you can change. If you look horrible, there's no way you can make yourself look fantastic. But don't worry, if you take take 10 selfies under good lighting conditions (natural sunlight is the best with the sun facing you), one of them is bound to look good.


The front camera for most phones are not ideal for selfies as the lighting and contrast is weird thus I've been using a selfie camera app called Wondercam for a few years already.



I don't use camera filters such as 'Selfie mode' on Camera360 or 'Natural', 'Whiten', 'Smooth' filters in other camera apps because the skin usually looks as if it is glowing and it's pretty obvious that it's unnatural, no matter that the camera app says it doesn't. The iPhone front camera also flips all the pictures around so if it's a selfie you should probably flip them back. Unless your face is perfectly symmetrical, bless you. 

(Be prepared to see a lot of my face as I start the tutorial)

Using PhotoWonder, I first 'Better Skin' under 'Beautify' and I adjust the scale to 1/7 (The most 1/5). Actually it doesn't really do much because the effect is so little but it just makes the skin look smoother, I guess.

Then I 'Anti-Acne' because I'm 14 and am currently going through puberty, my skin condition isn't the best so of course, I'll have pimples that I'm not happy about. 

After which I will get rid of blackened pimples (after you squeeze them lol), uneven lighting and my dark eye circles with 'Dark-Rim'.

I USED to use the 'Slim' function to make my nose look slightly smaller because I'm insecure about that part of my face. But the difference is so little and after a few updates there are glitches beside the spot you which to touch up on so I stopped using it.

On the Perfect365 app I make my skin look even smoother by adjusting the scale to about 15-25%,





 add about 20-30% contouring to my nose, this is such a self-esteem booster for me.




30-35% of eyeliner and eyelashes



and 20% of whitening my teeth.

I don't usually add lipstick as it's hard to ensure the colour doesn't come out of your lip shape but surprisingly, the lipstick function for this edit worked out well so I added 25% of pale pink. I don't really see the difference, to be honest.

Another function I quite like but don't use is the eye colour function. There are many color choices and is pretty realistic and good to use if like me, you're too poor to get color and design contacts. Just make sure the overlay is on your pupil and it's not like popping out, it'll look weird if it is so it's quite clear cut. The percentage depends on how obvious you want it to look and most importantly, the lighting.

Just to show you how the eye color function should look like:

Overall I think Photowonder is 8/10. It used to be better before a ton of updates and now it takes up a lot of storage space. But the functions are really really useful! (They even have one where they can make your legs look slimmer omg) The quality of the pictures does drop but it's still acceptable.

However, I can only give Perfect365 a 7/10 rating because it does the job well but after some updates when the app got popular, I find that the picture quality decreases drastically.  Especially since saved image for does not exceed 1mg. There were also an incident where there was like a glitch at the side of my edited photo. But hey, it's free! And if someone is really desperate they buy the in-app purchase. 

I've recently found an app called 'YouCam Makeup' that does the job and work just like Perfect365. It's better in terms of eye color (more and better), lipstick (placement is more accurate) and eyelashes (prettier choices). But I find the nose sharpening/contouring to look awkward and the eyeliner designs all look similar so it's a limited choice. Unfortunately, I found out that it does not recognise all the photos in my gallery thus I can't edit it. I tried to share the picture I want to edit into the app but it didn't work too.


Why do I feel like I'm writing an advertorial for the above applications haha...


Lastly, as some may have wondered why I am steering away from the subject of editing the body shape, it's because I don't do that. But I mean, isn't it like a smarter, one-step method instead of going to the gym or dieting to look better? Hahaha but when doing that you should take notice of the background and make sure it doesn't bend or swirl as you push in a part of your body. 

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And with all that I have finally finished expressing my thoughts and feelings on the idea of photo editing photos! I do hope that you have understood my point and not be like those who 'eww' at confessions and actions like this. If you still think editing photos are lying and cheating to the world when so many people say they do it, fine by me, feel free to believe what you want to believe! 

It took me quite an amount of courage to post this and share some before-editing selfies... Knowing that I'll be hated and judged on, I still want to speak up. I'm just that type of person that won't shut up when I have an opinion! So if you still want to send hate to me, you know where to find me, (social website links at the side of my blog) I'm waiting for you with my arms wide open :)

Please do tell me what you thought of this blog post! Do you agree or disagree? Why? Do you edit your selfies? What should I blog about next? Tell me everything and anything down in the comment section! (You can remain anonymous if you want)