Relook review: incredible editing tools for portrait photos

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Whenever I see a picture of myself, I always notice my flaws. Whether it is redness on my cheeks, lines under my eyes, or that age spot on the right side of my face, I see that more than I see the overall picture.

With Relook, you can fix all of those flaws and give your subject great skin, a wider smile, and perfect lighting, every time. We’ve got an app review of Relook for you today.

Concept

This is a high-quality photo-retouching app from the same company that brought us Repix. With it, you can do all sorts of touch ups to a person’s face, including altering the structure of cheekbones and changing the color of eyes. You can also export edited photos to Lightroom or Photoshop for further enhancements without losing the original picture.

Design

All of the controls are on the main view screen separated by sections, categorized as Retouch, Reshape, Tones, and Looks. Within each section are different editing tools, displayed at the bottom of the screen. There is also an undo button and an erase tool, which lets you manually remove an edit.

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App Use

Users add an image from their device’s camera roll. There is no in-app camera so pictures must be saved to the camera roll to be used.

Start by retouching the photo. Use the Clean tool to even out the skin. It is very subtle so that the subject’s skin texture does not look plastic or fake. The Smooth tool evens out skin that has large pores or acne scars. Clarity is used to brighten and sharpen the eyes. Teeth removes color from the image so you can whiten teeth. Redness slightly adjusts the tone of patches of red skin. Defocus acts like a manual blur tool to let you focus in on a subject.

The Spot Heal tool lets you remove acne, moles, and other blemishes with just a tap. The tool will clone a clean patch of skin near the blemish and automatically replace it where you tap.

With the dedicated Clone tool, you can fix larger problem areas. Touch the area you wish to remove and drag your finger to a clear patch of skin and it will clone it. You can even clean up a scruffy beard. Soft Clone works similarly, but adds a slight blurring effect for removing wrinkles and fine lines.

The Reshaping tools will make it possible for you to change the structure of a person’s face. The Move tool is probably the most disconcerting tool in my opinion because it can completely alter a person’s features and still look natural. It is creepy how well it works. Bring in jawlines, widen foreheads, fix broken noses, and more. Spot move gives you tighter control over specific details, like shaping lips or straightening teeth. The resize tool lets you increase or decrease the size of a person’s eyes.

In the Tones section, you can brighten or shade different areas of the face for better highlights. The Color tool allows you to change the tone of the skin. You can also use this tool to change a person’s eye color.

Saturate brightens the color of a specific spot and works great for making lips look fuller. Decolor flattens out the color of the background for you (or wherever you use the tool).

Once you’ve made your adjustments and facial tweaks, you can add a filter that helps enhance the overall picture. The filters are based on subtle lighting changes so you can make it seem like the photo was taken in a studio with controlled lighting.

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The Good

The tools work incredibly well. If you don’t understand how to use any one of them, each has its own animated GIF and a small explanation. Plus, the help section includes a link to Vimeo, where tutorial videos are available

The Bad

Not only is there no in-app camera, but you can only select pictures from your device’s camera roll. So, if you move your pictures to different albums, you won’t be able to access them from within this app. Users should be able to grab pictures from any album in their Photos app.

Value

Relook costs $3.99 and is universally available on both iPhone and iPad. The price is comparable to high quality, feature-rich photo editing apps like it. The precision tools and simplicity of use makes it well worth the price for anyone looking to modify portrait pictures so meticulously. The ability to export to Photoshop is an extra cost of $3.99.

Conclusion

This app works incredibly. It has plenty of facial editing features to help you hide flaws, restructure faces, and make people look more beautiful than they should. If you don’t already have a feature rich portrait-editing tool, this is a great one to invest in. Download it in the App Store today.

Related Apps

Facetune is a very popular app with similar features, but a different interface and no universal support.

What do you think of Relook? Let us know in the comments below.