Face Swapping - Photo trend from the USA

The English verb "to swap" means to exchange, to swap, to replace. This brings us to a current photographic trend that's sweeping over to us from America: face swapping . To participate, all you need is a smartphone app or a small piece of software. Both allow you to swap any face from a photo and replace it with others.

For example, one could cut the president's wife out of a photo of the Obama couple and superimpose one's face onto her body. Anyone who explores the implications of face-swapping realizes that it can be used for a lot of mischief, but also promotes historical distortion.

People who have become unpleasant can simply be exchanged for others. In the future, the Chinese Mao Tse may no longer have to be retired from official photos, but can replace it with a politician that has not become unsuccessful.

Photo effects - for example implemented by processing programs such as Photoshop - are now a popular way to upgrade, change or combine your pictures. Face Swapping is technically easy to do. To perform a Face Swap, you only have to cut out the face of the person concerned with a suitable tool from a photo and push it to another point - for example a different photo.

For example, you can take a photo of a father and daughter and create a picture where the father suddenly has the daughter's face, and vice versa. The inserted images are automatically resized by the face swap program, or you can manually adjust them to look as natural as possible.

Occasionally, compatibility is insufficient because a person was seen in the half profile, but the other from the front. This can also be created with the FACE SWAP strange effects. Photo shots with three noses or pairs of eyes completely alienate a person.

Face swapping is based on facial recognition technology Numerous applications , can already be found online . Those who use it skillfully can swap the faces of Presidents Bush and Obama, while keeping the forehead and hairstyle the same.

The effect is astonishing: Obama suddenly has gray, side -lifted hair, Bush has a super short cut. The desired section size of the Face Swaps is defined yourself. Therefore, you can calculate the effects that occur to a certain extent.

Basically, you can digitally edit a picture and subject it to a complete or partial change. These photo effects arose in the nineties, but only developed the trend with the iPhones and tablet computers. "Face Bombing" is known as the further development or variation of the "Face Swaps" .

Here, you don't just swap one face, but all the faces in a group for the same one. Time will tell what ingenious photo effects you can achieve with face swapping. What's clear, however, is that it won't remain a technological gimmick.

The press also has also used for such tools and can now assemble any heads on the bodies of others in order to develop a selling -out cover picture. With the help of other funds, this has been done for a long time. In quality, however, it often left a lot to be desired.

For all mobile phone users with Android operating system, I can recommend the following great Face Swap App on Google Play:

• Face Swap for Android

With this app it is a lot of fun and is so easy to exchange faces that everyone can do it.

If you are the proud owner of the new Photoshop software (CS5 or newer…), you can of course also do it yourself and perform a professional face swap within just a few minutes.