We live in the era of the selfie: Mobile phones are the source of the lion's share of all the world's photography, as evidenced by Flickr's Camera Finder page, and the popularity of Instagram. And the portrait ranks among the most prevalent type of photo. No wonder Facetune is the second-most-downloaded paid iPhone app in the iTunes App Store at the time of writing, bested only by the generation-defining Minecraft video game. At $3.99, Facetune is expensive for an app. But people want those faces to look good, and this app is here to help, with more powerful tools than you'll find in Instagram.

Getting the App and Setting Up

Facetune is a 49MB download that works in iOS 7.0 and later; it's also available as an Android app. The iOS version of the app is compatible with the iPad and iPod touch as well as the iPhone. On first run, it asked to send notifications, which seemed unnecessary for a photo editing app. But you don't have to sign up for an account to get going in Facetune. I tested the app on an iPhone 6s.

Interface

Facetune's interface is clean and clear, far less complicated than that of PicsArt Photo Studio, though that app has more functionality. When you start, you see a mostly plain white field with buttons across the bottom for Canvas, Whiten (for teeth), Smoothing, Details, Reshape, among others—11 buttons in all. At the top, the camera button slides out a menu from which you can start shooting or selecting photos to work on. When I opened a photo taken with my iPhone 6s, a message informed me that it was a Very Large Image, and gave me a choice between opening it in the recommended or the maximum size. I let the program downsize the photo for a smoother editing experience. You can also practice using the app with a sample photo.

As you start editing, overlaid tooltips show what you can do in the app using those 11 buttons. When you choose one of the tools, a mini-tutorial page on its use shows up first, including short videos that demonstrate the tools. It's a very helpful interface, which may partly explain the app's popularity. Back and forward arrows let you undo and redo your edits, which is always reassuring when you're tinkering with precious images. One button lets you see how far afield your image has gone from the original by reverting the view to the original image as you hold it down. Don't worry too much, however; Facetune offers non-destructive editing, meaning that your original image remains unchanged. The app saves a new copy.

Smoother Skin

A good place to start improving those visages is by smoothing the skin. The app offers two levels of this: Smooth and Smoother. You move the image around with a two-finger drag and apply the effect with a single finger. If you must move the image around with one finger, a Move button allows this. An eraser stands at the ready should you overdo the smoothing; too much smoothing can make your subject look like a porcelain doll. As with any powerful photography software, it's entirely possible to overdo it. Less is more, as anyone who has ever read a click-bait story about Photoshop disasters knows. 

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The red-eye-removal tool works but is somewhat disappointing, in that it isn't as automatic as other recent implementations I've used, such as the version in the free Microsoft Photos app that comes with Windows 10. With Facetune I had to move the dark circle manually to place it over the red pupil. In its favor, Facetune also lets you change or enhance eye color.

The Details button's main aim is to give your subject bright, shiny eyes, which it does commendably. The Reshape tool reminds me of Photoshop's Liquefy, which lets you modify the geometry of facial features. With Reshape, you can make eyes rounder, chins shorter, and so on. Use this one sparingly, unless you're going for a funhouse mirror effect. It won't automatically identify facial features, such as mouths, the way Adobe's Photoshop Fix can. That app makes it easier to change a subject's expression, for example turning a mild frown into a mild smile.

Cropping, Filters, and Frames

Cropping is decent, and you can rotate; you can't change the angle, though, but can only rotate in 90-degree increments. You can also brush on color tones, for a makeup effect (or you could use this tool to make a friend look like a member of Blue Man Group). The teeth-whitening tool is pretty subtle, and doesn't make your subject's mouth look like a fluorescent lightbulb. 

Filters include the standard photographic options: Sepia, Classic Lens Styles, Textures, Photographic Paper Types, Lighting, and Wipes. With all of these, you swipe your finger across the image to increase the effect. The Defocus option lets you blur backgrounds for a pseudo-tilt-shift or selective focus effect, de-emphasizing backgrounds so they don't distract from the face that's the photo's subject.

Facetune offers a fine selection of classic and artistic Frames to wrap around your portrait, and you have the option of showing before-and-after versions of your photo.

Sharing

PicsArt Studio has joined the fray of online social image-sharing services, but Facetune stays focused on portrait perfecting. You can share your images to the more common services, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, and Instagram, with built-in sharing options. Of course, you can simply save your work to the Camera Roll, share them via email, or send them to any other app that can accept images through the Share Sheet in iOS.

True App Beauty?

Facetune is not an automatic, one-button-press face-fixer-upper, but neither are other, similar apps. When approaching this app, one of my first questions was whether it could stand up to apps from that powerhouse of imaging software, Adobe, as well as to another powerful app and PCMag Editors' Choice in this area, PicsArt Studio. Facetune earns its place alongside those apps as a leader in the pantheon of iPhone photo editing software and is a PCMag Editors' Choice iPhone app.