News: Meitu's BeautyPlus Selfie-Perfecting App Just Got Some Fun AR Filters

The popular beauty app company Meitu is incorporating augmented reality (AR) video and image filters and effects in its selfie-editing app BeautyPlus for iOS and Android.

Meitu has now added over 20 augmented reality filters to the app, which already was able to do smart retouches to photos and videos. The apps currently features also include a suite of selfie-editing tools, Artificial Intelligence (AI) auto-beautification, virtual makeup, "Magic Brush," and "AnimeCam," which is AR-powered.

The new AR filters are applied to the user's face and surrounding area in real time, as a photo, video, selfie, or with a friend. The filter choice includes stormy clouds, devil horns, and floating deserts for all your selfie needs.

Before the 20+ AR filters were added, BeautyPlus incorporated a multitude of other features, described below:

• Advanced Facial Recognition and Skin Tone Detection: Detects and applies the best filter for your skin tone
• Skin Retouching and Smoothing: Smooths imperfections and blemishes with a skin-smoothing filter.
• Eye and Smile Perfecting: Eliminates bags and dark circles while brightening eyes and whitening teeth to make your eyes really pop in pictures.
• AnimeCam: Users can turn selfies into animated collages with quirky filters and frames.
• Magic Brush: Ethereal effect brushes give a surrealist aspect into your photos, using Glow, Neon, Stars, and Flowers, to further your creativity.

Meitu apps boast 450 million monthly active users worldwide and the company has had extensive success on the market since it launched in 2008. Alongside BeautyPlus, its digital products include MeituPic, Meipai, SelfieCity, BeautyCam, Airbrush, and MakeupPlus.

These apps have been installed on 1.1 billion unique devices, which is certainly impressive.

Last year, the Managing Director of Meitu's global operations Frank Fu vowed that Meitu would continue to evolve and that its success was "just the beginning." He hinted that the next chapter would involve facial recognition and virtual try-on.

Speaking about the latest additions to BeautyPlus, Fu said in a press release:

Augmented Reality is arguably one of the most exciting things to happen to photo and video in years... BeautyPlus puts this amazing technology into the palm of every consumers' hands, giving them a fun collection of AR looks to uniquely express themselves and capture their individuality through photo and video.

BeautyPlus isn't the first or the only app to incorporate AR effects and filters. The popular makeup brand Sephora recently added several AR features to sell products, including 'Expert Looks' which allows users to experiment with on-trend looks, and 'Virtual Tutorials' which made its debut last year demonstrates how to contour and highlight like a professional.

All of these filters and effects truly stem from Snapchat, which was the first big social site to employ AR for facial filters and effects to manipulate the user's appearance. Facebook has also been rolling out similar video features and effects in all of their apps, including the main Facebook app, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram.

If you want to enhance your natural beauty with BeautyPlus, download it for iOS or Android and let the selfie fun commence.

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