Microsoft has decided to get in on the selfie craze by launching an iOS app straightforwardly called Microsoft Selfie. Described as a portrait enhancement application, the tool takes several factors into consideration such as age, skin tone, gender and lighting to deliver a professional-looking photo with one tap.
Microsoft Selfie isn’t the first iOS app the brand has made available to Apple users, but it definitely marks a break from its usual stable of productivity applications like the recently launched Cortana and Office tools. Many manufacturers bundle a built-in photo enhancer with its handsets, so the new offering isn’t particularly innovative in that respect.
What may possibly set Microsoft Selfie apart from rival apps is the machine learning technology which the company has incorporated into it. The brand had demonstrated the potential of the software back in April this year by having it guess the age of a person based on a photograph.
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Microsoft Selfie has a fairly simple UI, similar to the tech giant’s Lumia Selfie app for Windows users. It gives people the option of either clicking a photo through the front or rear-facing camera or accessing one from the gallery. A sliding scale lets them choose how much processing they want to allow.
Microsoft promises the application will reduce grainy noise, automatically correct the exposure and intelligently enhance the image. There are also 13 filters to choose from, with imaginative names like Wonka and 1965. Unfortunately, the company has not equipped the tool with in-built sharing options for social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
It seems like an odd omission given the number of people who share selfies online. In any case, Microsoft Selfie is now live and can be downloaded from iTunes. There’s no word from the company yet on whether it plans to release an Android app as well in the future.