The mobile phone camera technology is fast evolving and so are the things people want to do with it. From taking simple selfies, people now use their camera phones to make them appear younger or even switch faces and genders on photos. You normally need photo editor apps to do this back then but with the advent of face swap apps, tweaking your photos has never been easier.
Not only face swap apps can make your photos look different, but they’re also a really fun way of killing time. With such a growing demand, a good number of face swap apps are emerging to get a share in the market. Nonetheless, not all of them are worth the try and are just making your choice difficult.
That said, we’ve narrowed down the selections for the ‘Best Face Swap Apps’ that will give your selfie photos a fun twist.
What Is a Face Swap App?
Face swaps were already present since the advent of photography. During those times, you would just cut out a photo of a face then paste it into a picture. When digital photography arrived, Photoshop became mainstream. A lot of people are keen to learn how to use photoshop for numerous reasons, and that includes face swaps. This process is too tedious, though. It would even take months just to understand and make use of the Photoshop software effectively. Plus, it requires a high-performance PC for the end product to be rendered really well.
Thank goodness, editing photos on your phone has become a piece of cake. With the arrival of iOS and Android phones, you won’t need to power up your PC anymore and edit using a keyboard and mouse. Nowadays, you can edit and beautify anything, from putting a little glitz and glamour to your photos to the fun and silly face-swapping.
With today’s technology, face-swapping apps are made available for both iOS and Android phones. This significantly eases the editing process of photos. It also enables you to edit your photos in real-time.
Face swapping apps became a trend with the rise of ‘FaceApp’. The function of face swap apps is pretty simplistic. As the word says, face swap apps exchange the faces of two subjects which may include people, animals, or even objects. Some face swaps may look legit, while others result in funny faces.
Best Face Swap Apps
The magic of face swap apps is truly remarkable. There’s no need to Photoshop your pictures meticulously. Just let the app do its job and the rest will work like sorcery.
With that said, here are the ‘Top 10 Face Swap Apps’ you can check out for your Android and iOS devices:
1. Snapchat
Look no further than Snapchat, one of the best face swap apps in the market today. With over 200 million users and cross-platform sharing, Snapchat has made a footing in the social media world.
What’s great about Snapchat is whenever you send a message, it disappears automatically by default. So, if ever you feel awkward with your face swap, the message will just disintegrate completely, assuming the receiver did not save it. Its face swap features can be used with inanimate objects too. Being a Roman emperor or a chocolate chip cookie has never been this easy. Most of all, there are no additional fees for any subscriptions.
2. Instagram
Instagram is a well-known photo-sharing social media app. They did not create any face swap filters yet, but independent creators have made tons of face swap filters for the app. Just choose the most compatible and most convincing filter to your liking. With almost a billion users, you can share your funny face swaps with the world and gain tons of likes in return. Unlike other apps, you won’t need to undergo a paywall just to use these face swap filters.
One thing to note though is that these filters only work in real-time. So if you wish to be Elsa on Frozen 2, better take your selfies in front of a TV that plays the movie. Also, we would like to wish that Instagram would create its own face-swapping filter. With Facebook’s acquisition of the face-swapping app ‘MSQRD’, it’ll now be easier for them to add their own face swap filter.
3. Reface
You may have heard of the Doublicat, an app that is well-known for its true-to-life deepfakes. Nowadays, they go by the name Reface. You can put your face in almost everything, from funny GIFs, famous movie scenes, and even the speeches of famous figures. What’s more interesting is that it completely swaps your face to another face and the effect appears convincingly real you might even be mistaken as the lead actor of a TV series — thanks mostly to deepfake.
As with many other apps out there, ads can pop up out of the blue. This may be bothersome, especially when you’re in the middle of editing something. You can avail of a subscription for $2.99/month or $29.99/year to rid yourself of the annoying ads. This is worth it if you are a true blue memer. But if you’re swapping faces just to kill time, you can make do with the free version of this app.
4. FaceApp
FaceApp could be the most popular face swap app there is. This app rose to fame in 2017 due to its hyper-realistic face-swapping capability. FaceApp can make you look older or younger in a really impressive way. It can also give you an idea of what you might look like if you were born in the opposite gender. Whatever you want to be, FaceApp will make you appear beautiful, handsome, older, or younger.
However, FaceApp has been mired with controversy along with its popularity. It was allegedly caught harvesting personal metadata from users of this app. FaceApp strongly denies this allegation and claims that they immediately erase users’ photos after 48 hours.
5. MixBooth
Most of the face swap apps we encounter only allow you to swap faces in real-time. Not with MixBooth, though. It allows you to swap faces with the pictures stored in your gallery or Facebook albums. Alternatively, you can still take a snapshot of your face and instantly swap faces with others in seconds. The best thing is, this process can be done offline.
However, there are some glitches in the app that need some fixing. MixBooth sometimes fails to detect any faces when you try to face swap your pictures. Also, you would need a decent lighting on your pictures so MixBooth can detect your faces.
Several users also report that some face swaps appear like it was just cut and pasted to another face. MixBooth needs to up their face-swapping game if they want to remain in this highly-competitive market.
6. B612
B612 is more popular for its beauty cam function. You can edit your pictures to make your face glow up – perfect for a #wokeuplikethis hashtag. Now, it also has a face swap option in its camera. You can now swap up your faces while looking glamorous at the same time. Add more glitz to your pictures by adding stickers and some music to it. This way, you can make your pictures cuter even if you don’t put your makeup on.
Just like Instagram’s face swap filters, B612’s face swap only works in real-time. That means you must have a partner when taking your pictures. Some users also report glitches when adding stickers to their pictures. Nonetheless, just make sure that your phone is powerful enough if you want to use this app. And since this is more of a beauty app, expect some oversaturated colors on your faces when you do face swap.
7. Face Swap Booth
Face Swap Booth might be the best app for creating meme-worthy photos. It comes pre-loaded with faces and photos of celebrities which then you can use to swap some of their features on your own face. Moreover, you can also add multiple layers on your face swaps by putting as many faces as you want, provided that you subscribe to their paid version. However, with the free version, you are limited to six face options. Once you leave a review, you will get another set of six faces.
8. PortraitAI
What if Vincent Van Gogh or Johannes Vermeer were living today and you asked them to make a portrait for you? This is made possible today, thanks to PortraitAI. This app may not be exactly a face swap app, but it can transform your pictures like you’ve swapped faces with old portraits. You can make your pictures painted like those of the 18th-century portraits.
We don’t want to sound racist here, but for now, PortraitAI only recognizes European ethnicities. They are continuously working hard on perfecting the AI so that it can recognize any colors of faces.
9. Photofunia
Photofunia is probably one of the highly-rated face swap apps available in the Play Store and App Store. This app focuses more on editing your photos, though it also has a face swap capability. With Photofunia, you can make yourself the next astronaut to go to Mars, or maybe the next Superman. What’s even great about this app is that you can resize the face you wish to edit. If you don’t mind having an oversized head on your face swaps, then go ahead. It even lets you face swap without using a camera in real-time. Just put your picture and the face you want to swap with and voila, your faces are now swapped.
Photofunia’s slew of face swap filters is a bit limited though. Most of the time, you will be stuck with putting two pictures side-by-side to simulate face-swapping. Animal faces and other objects are not recognized too, so you cannot swap faces with your pet. Hopefully, they will also remake their user interface (UI) to look and feel more modern.
10. Cupace
Cut and paste your face with Cupace. The nomenclature itself serves its function: cut the picture of your face and paste it onto another person’s face. You can even zoom in on any pictures, crop a face, and swap faces with that zoomed face. Also, all of the face filters that you will use are reusable. Yes, it might look grainy, but we want to have fun with our photos, aren’t we? You can even perk up your photos with stickers, text, or another photo.
This app is greatly recommended on the Android platform. Many users rave about its precise cutting and zooming features. We just wish that the developers would make an iOS version of this app. In that way, it can widen its reach and make more exciting features suited for Android and iOS users.
Takeaways
Face swap apps are ridiculously fun to play with. Reimagining our faces into someone or something else is quite amusing and dreamy at the same time. Face swap technology has greatly improved and is continually developing, even achieving a level that looks very much convincing.
However, don’t forget to be careful in uploading your pictures, as some may use them for shady transactions. Face swap apps are truly amazing yet still, it gives us the creeps every time we use it. Nevertheless, use these kinds of apps consciously and responsibly.
