A University Wants To Help You Reach Selfie Perfection

Selfies are now a normal part of life. I mean, everywhere you turn there seems to be someone pouting for the camera but a University department believes we can all be posing for our selfies a little bit better and as a result, have created a new app to help us out. 

The app was designed by the Computer Science department at the University of Waterloo and it uses algorithms to direct the user where to position the camera so they can capture the best selfie possible. 

"Selfies have increasingly become a normal way for people to express themselves and their experiences, only not all selfies are created equal," said Dan Vogel, a professor of computer science at Waterloo. "Unlike other apps that enhance a photo after you take it, this system gives direction, meaning the user is actually learning why their photo will be better."

While developing the algorithm, Vogel and Qifan Li - a former Master’s student at Waterloo, bought 3D digital scans of people and they captured hundreds of 'virtual selfies' by writing code to control a virtual smartphone camera. They also used computer-generated lighting to explore different composition principles, including lighting direction, face position and face size.

Using an online crowdsourcing service, the researchers then had thousands of people vote on which of the virtual selfie photos they felt were best and then mathematically modelled the patterns of votes to develop an algorithm that can guide people to take the best selfie.

They later had real people take selfies with a standard camera app as well as an app powered by the algorithm and they found a 26 per cent improvement in selfies taken with Waterloo’s app.

"This is just the beginning of what is possible," said Vogel. "We can expand the variables to include variables aspects such as hairstyle, types of smile or even the outfit you wear."

You can learn more on the selfie app technology in the video above.