Facetune has long been known for beautifying even our worst selfies, but now it wants to try something new: emojifying them.
A new app from the selfie editor takes photos of your face and gives them emoji expressions – laughing, crying, blowing kisses, getting sick, etc. They can be still images or turned into GIFs and videos, often with surprising (and frightening) results.
Called Memoji, this iPhone app can be used on your own face by snapping a quick selfie or can take imported images of someone else and contort them into emojis.
Here’s how it works:
There are two ways to use Memoji: By snapping a quick selfie within the app, or uploading something from your camera roll.
Memoji offers several emojis options to choose from, including the “joy” face, the “triumph” face (which most people use to signify rage), and the kissing face. You can even turn yourself into the unicorn emoji.
Once you take a selfie, you can scroll through the various emojis at the bottom of the app, much like Snapchat filters. The app will show you what it looks like on your face in real-time.
Uploading a photo of someone else — or a selfie you took a few days ago that's already in your camera roll — works the same way. Here's Tim Cook looking awfully sad.
When you've selected your filter, the purple paper airplane button in the upper right hand corner lets you export it. You can turn your Memoji into a GIF or video, or just select a still image.
Memoji lets you save the photo or video to your camera roll, or upload it directly to apps like Twitter, Snapchat, or Instagram.
While some of the Memoji, like the kissing face, are pretty cute, others are downright frightening. If you have an iPhone, you can see for yourself by downloading Memoji for free from the App Store.