Why Do I Look So Ugly in Pictures Compared to the Mirror?

There’s barely anything that’s worse than spending hours getting ready to go to a party you have been waiting for days to come and when the pictures of the event finally come, you seem as if a witch cast a spell on you. It’s easy to question yourself in moments like this “Why do I look so ugly in pictures”. It’s even worse when it’s your big moment like a graduation, birthday party, or even wedding, you especially want to look your best in the pictures—not to see the flaws, but to relive the story behind the moment.

There are in fact a lot of reasons why you may feel like you get ugly pictures, and to make you feel a lot better, yes, it is all in your head. See, the thing with our brains is that they prefer familiarity, so when you see yourself in the mirror, it shows you a reversed image of yourself, and it’s also not a still image, it’s a moving reflection of yourself. And this will answer your question “Why do I look so ugly in pictures but not in the mirror”?

There obviously isn’t a rule book that you must abide by that grants you a certainty that you’ll look good in your photos no matter what. But you never know what reason could potentially be holding you back from questioning “Why do I look so bad in pictures”. Explore these tips that may help you look good in your photos. 

Angle of the Camera

You take your picture from a very unflattering angle, you either lift your head or purse it against your neck a lot, highlighting your double chin. Experiment with different angles and you may find one that highlights your features a lot better. 

How to fix it?

Stand in front of the mirror and see what is your most flattering angle for you. Usually tilting your head a bit towards either left or right works best for most people. You may as well experiment by clicking several of your photos with different camera angle setting, including zooming in or zooming out a bit too, and then evaluate how you look the best.

Your Lighting is Bad 

The lighting in which you took your photo is awful and because of that the shadows of your features either fall to your face, or your complexion just seems…off. It may appear oddly dull which turns down the whole vibe of the photo altogether. 

Source: www.danihawthorne.com 

How to fix it?

Take your photos in natural sunlight facing the sun, not the sharp indoor lighting that creates unattractive facial shadows that fall on the face. It creates an illusion of distorted features. 

The Dimensions are Unrealistic

You take your portraits in selfie mode. This warps the dimension of your face making your facial features look distorted.

Source: www.newsweek.com

How to fix it?

Try and take your photos from the back camera, not only will you find the quality of the picture to be more enhanced, but your facial structure will appear a lot more realistic. 

Your Facial Expressions are Stiff

You smile awkwardly. There’s honestly nothing to smile or laugh about so it may seem a little fake when you do it on camera. 

Source: www.today.com

How to fix it?

A fake laugh and smile can often easily be detected, if you can’t smile from the heart, perhaps put your eye muscles to a little use. Squinting your eyes a little while smiling makes it seem as if your smile is genuine.

Also read: How to Smile for Pictures With or Without Showing the Teeth?

Flash Makes You Unflattering

You take your pictures with the flash on. There’s nothing flattering about unnatural light that makes your skin appear unusually greasy, and unappealing. Unfortunately, flash may not always be the solution to good lighting. 

Source: www.wired.com

How to fix it?

Turn that flash off, it makes you look like a grease ball and makes your features stand out in a really sharp way. Invest in a really cost effective ring light or photography light. But again, the best lighting is the natural light that you can take full use of. 

You Don’t Know How to Pose

Underconfidence is exuded from your photos by your posture or facial expressions. This can come off as seeming really unattractive as underconfidence and doesn’t suit anybody!

Source: www.kellymcphail.com

How to fix it?

Get used to posing your best pose. Practice a little, and when the time comes to click that picture, don’t be unsure of what to do, simply rely on your go-to pose where you know you’ll look your best.

Wear clothes you are comfortable in. Your discomfort at times is reflected through your confidence which is very visible in the photos, if you want to look your best, you must feel your best. 

BeautyPlus became a notorious name in the photo editing industry for beautifying images long before AI was even a thing. But BeautyPlus appears to have taken full advantage of this technology to produce the most phenomenal results even when it comes to beautifying an image further, which extends beyond just fixing a little makeup and skin texture. 

AI Filter

Your average filter at most will adjust the lighting and add an extra layer of coloured hue to your picture. BeautyPlus has more than just a filter option ready for you to apply to your pictures a single tap away. It is AI-Powered which obviously means that it is better plus will give your photos a more realistic approach to it. The vibe that you want to come through in your pictures can easily be achieved with BeautyPlus’s AI Filter. 

ID Photo

The AI Portrait isn’t the only tool you must have by your side when you want to generate an ID. BeautyPlus has a dedicated ID Photo tool that will take your photo and make it look exactly like an ID photo plus resize and create photocopies accordingly. You have 8 options for the ID photo generator, where you won’t have to worry about smiling or having an awkward pose because BeautyPlus will sort it all for you so you do not even have to move a finger. 

AI Retouch

While BeautyPlus has all these tools where you can manually adjust the subtle features in your face so they don’t appear a little unusual, the AI Retouch feature manages to do all that in a single tab. It offers plenty of retouching themes which include “Daily”, “Charm”, “Lovely”, “Natural” etc. These are simply looks that you can opt for and they will fix your makeup, retouch your photo vibe, and subtly reshape  your features, making it all seem natural and as if the photo was taken from one of the best cameras in the world

AI Enhancer

There’s another tool that goes by “Image Quality” in the BeautyPlus app which removes the blur from the photo but the AI Enhancer tool will take your picture to a whole new level where it will make your photo more vibrant and crisp, bringing the details and colours of the photo to its full glory. 

Portrait 

This tool alone is what attributed to the popularity of BeautyPlus. From here you have access to change nearly all aspects of your photo:

Makeup: This feature includes all cosmetic elements that you can change from changing the lipstick colour to virtually any colour of your choice, to including eyelashes, to adding freckles, to changing eye colour. 

Looks: Instead of individually changing makeup _ the look feature allows you to explore various looks such as old money, chestnut, daily, etc. which includes a very specific makeup look. 

Hair: This is pretty self-explanatory that besides the versatile hairstyles, you can also give your hair a different look by adding colour to it or changing the hairline or hair partition. 

Expression: When the time comes when you’re about to get that perfect photo but just when the camera is about to snap your picture, you blink. BeautyPlus can seamlessly help you fix that with the “Expression” tool which won’t just open your eyes if you close them but make you smile, grin, wink, close your lips or give you  that cute or cool expression. 

Other tools include teeth whitening, and increasing or decreasing the eye size, or head size. Face contouring, body tuning,  and teeth correction. 

Now, don’t be discouraged, if you are not able to get that perfect photo that seems to be so good in your head, but is not what you expect it to be when you look at it. Since you see yourself every single day, you are more critical about your appearance than anybody else so rest assured, others most certainly do not perceive you to be “ugly”. And as for the minor distortions that may appear in your pictures they can be easily fixed with photo editors like BeautyPlus.