One major factor is that photos generally show us the reverse of what we see in the mirror. When you take a photo of yourself using some (but not all) apps or the front-facing camera on an iPhone, the resulting image captures your face as others see it. The same is true for non-phone cameras.
Hold two hand mirrors in front of you with their edges touching and a right angle between them like the two covers of a book when you're reading. With a little adjustment you can get a complete reflection of your face as others see it. Wink with your right eye. The person in the mirror winks his or her right eye.
However, pictures show your image the way you really look. When you look at yourself in pictures, it's a slightly different version of yourself than you are used to seeing. Psychology Today added that not everyone prefers their mirror image over their actual image because some like how they look in photographs.
If you think you look better in person than in photographs, you're probably right. According to new research by psychologists at the Universities of California and Harvard, most of us succumb to the "frozen face effect" in still photos -- and it's not very flattering.
There's a difference between your image in the mirror and in photos. The image you see in the mirror is reversed compared to the image that others see face-to-face with you. Your friends are familiar with your non-reversed image, while you are familiar with your reversed image in a regular mirror.
A mirror reflection is a more accurate interpretation of the way a person looks. What is a more accurate representation of the way we look: mirrors or pictures? Both are inaccurate representations of your facial features, but in my experience, pictures can distort your attractiveness a lot more than mirrors can.
In short, what you see in the mirror is nothing but a reflection and that may just not be how people see you in real life. In real life, the picture may be completely different. All you have to do is stare at a selfie camera, flip and capture your photo. That's what you really look like.
It is important to understand that pictures are a 2-D version of real life. This simply means that photos tend to flatten your features or distort them due to certain angles. Also, since photos store everything, any awkward movement which goes unnoticed in real life is captured for everyone to see.
When being asked that can someone be very beautiful in person, but not very photogenic, most people would give the “YES” answer. There are some people around us look beautiful but not photogenic. What makes thing even more shocking is the opposite that some photogenic people do not surprise you in real life.
A new study shows that 20% of people see you as more attractive than you do. When you look in the mirror, all you see is your appearance. When others look at you they see something different such as personality, kindness, intelligence, and sense of humor. All these factors make up a part of a person's overall beauty.
The camera lens is not the human eye
That results in all sorts of weird idiosyncrasies. It's called lens distortion and it can render your nose, eyes, hips, head, chest, thighs and all the rest of it marginally bigger, smaller, wider or narrower than they really are.
“According to the mere-exposure effect, when your slight facial asymmetries are left unflipped by the camera, you see an unappealing, alien version of yourself,” Wired explained. In other words, the camera version is like an unfamiliar portrait of ourselves that we neither recognize nor care to.
When you look at yourself in a bathroom mirror, you're seeing an image from double the distance to that mirror. That makes a huge difference in the distortion effect. For those pictures you're going to post on the internet, figure out some way to put a little more distance between you and the camera.
People see the same as the camera sees, because camera designers have chosen it to be that way. We want the camera to show what we would see if we are positioned where the camera is. We could have chosen otherwise.
So, is that really what other people see when they look at you? Again, we're sorry to inform you that the answer is yes. If you think about it, it makes sense. The only time you see yourself is when you either look in the mirror or when you use your front-facing camera to take a selfie (or record a video).
Here's why.) The most common cause of camera distortion is that the subject is too close to the lens. Most photographers say that the type of lens used also has a lot to do with it, and wide-angle lenses (like the ones in our camera phones) are big offenders.
A camera has only one eye, so photography flattens images in a way that mirrors do not. Also, depending on the focal length and distance from the subject, the lens can create unflattering geometric distortions.
This may also provide an explanation for why many individuals think they are not photogenic: when people see their photographs—an unmodified view—they compare it to their memorized face, and the resulting incongruence is attributed to a poor photograph or being “not photogenic.”
Specifically, science of the brain. We are used to identifying with our faces as they would appear in a mirror, but when we take a selfie, the camera captures our faces as strangers would see us from head on rather than we would see ourselves in a reflection.
In a series of studies, Epley and Whitchurch showed that we see ourselves as better looking than we actually are. The researchers took pictures of study participants and, using a computerized procedure, produced more attractive and less attractive versions of those pictures.
Hence not a single camera or lens can compete with the human eye, even with our current technology. Not only that but it is also worth mentioning that camera distortion indeed is a thing and it can really make you look awful, so yeah once again, it is not you who look fat or bad, it's just the camera distortion.
I found the front camera gives more pleasing pictures than the back one, for example, the pictures taken by the back one often shows my eyes are proportionally smaller. Also the front camera seems to produce completely dark pictures when the lighting isn't good, while the back camera can still produce clearer pictures.
Sometimes it makes them look better, but the mirror is always more accurate. Unless you're using your phone screen as a reflective surface, in which case you can trust it.