The Top 5 Virtual Makeover Websites and Apps

If you're curious about how you'd look like with Liz Taylor eyebrows, red matte lipstick, and hazel eyes (or anything, anything, and anything), but you're lazy, broke, or intimidated, let technology save you via the virtual makeover, where all you need is a picture of yourself looking straight at the camera. Here are few of my favorites.

TAAZ

I've said it before, and again after that, but TAAZ (which is free) is the greatest online makeover site of all time. Go to it! Plus you can do things there like give Nosferatu a new look, or freshen up old elementary school pictures. The possibilities are literally endless, which after a while tinges the whole thing with vain frenzy, as if there must be some mathematically perfect combination of hair/makeup out there for you -- the perfect violet eyeliner, the most devastating side part -- that you might never find, no matter how many hours you spend browsing hair templates. In any case, TAAZ. It's T[h]A[t] [am]AZ[ing].

ELLE's Virtual Makeover Tool

Not quite as elaborate as TAAZ but very slightly easier/faster to use is ELLE magazine's Virtual Makeover Tool (also free), a streamlined site that gets you "into" someone else's hair [and face] within three minutes. Although hairstyle-changing sites everywhere do still leave something to be desired -- at the end of the day it still pretty much looks like you're putting your head in a clown hole (or whatever those things are at the circus where you put your face through a cutout). ELLE's site does have a particularly good lipstick section, though, which -- like TAAZ -- tells you the brand of the particular shade you're "trying on." Ditto the eye makeup. ELLE also might beat TAAZ in the eyebrow category, but just barely, because it's frustrating that neither site lets you manually fill in, enlarge, or do anything other than thin your brows with a toggle bar. Business opportunity? Anastasia Soare, the Golden Ratio eyebrow guru, should get in on that.


ModiFace Virtual Makeup Tool for iPhone, iPad, Android

Keep the inwardly turned party going while you're on the road with ModiFace, a free app for iPhone, iPad, and Androids. Apple users give it a 4.5 out of five stars, and here's a video explaining how it works. It's pretty much like the other two!








Stila's Virtual Makeover and Get the Look App for iPhone, iPad

Stila fans, take note: The makeup brand has a (free) makeover tool for its own products and a (free) Get the Look makeup app for your gadgets. You have to register on the site to upload your own photo, but then after that it's smooth sailing with all their eyeshadows and lipstains/sticks/glosses/blushes.


OPI Nail Polish App for iPhone, iPad

For the more single-minded, there's OPI's nail polish app (free), for seeing what different polish shades look like on an animated model's hand. Whatever works.

Anything I missed, you crazed narcissists?

===================================================================
Edith Zimmerman is the editor of The Hairpin, a blog for women that features original content and general-interest stories of the day.