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.
The mirror is more accurate, since it doesn't exhibit any optical aberrations. You can't achieve that with any camera. Only flat mirrors can do this.
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.
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.
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.
Measure from the center of your hairline to the tip of your chin. Next, measure from the left side of your face to the right side. If your face is longer than it is wide, you may have an oval face shape. If your face is wider than it is long, you may have a round or heart face shape.
When using the filter, you're actually looking at the “unflipped” image of yourself, or the version of yourself that everyone else sees when looking at you. When looking at the inverted picture or video, it can feel like looking at a completely different version of our face.
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 another psychological bias that affects us when looking at pictures of ourselves. It's called the confirmation bias. It's the bias that makes you hate you. The confirmation bias is our tendency to search for and find information that backs up our previously held beliefs.
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.
A flat mirror has no aberrations or distortion like a lens does. So your reflection in a mirror will always be a more accurate representation of you. A mirror reflection is a more accurate interpretation of the way a person looks.
They see a horizontally reversed version of what you see in the mirror. You never actually get to see yourself. If you're curious, it is possible to see what others see. You'll need two mirrors, set at angles to each other in a V shape.
When you look in a mirror, who do you see? Not the person other people see, since our reflection in the mirror is reversed by our brain. Raise your left hand, and the person in the mirror raises their right hand. From the way we part our hair to the way we smile, our faces are not symmetrical.
We have spent our lives seeing our faces in the mirror, and we have become used to seeing our face that way round. So when we reverse that image, it doesn't look right. No one has a perfectly symmetrical face.
This may be because when we look in a mirror, our image is reversed left to right, which can make us look different than we expect. In photographs, however, our image is not reversed, so we are likely to perceive ourselves as looking more like we do in reality.
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.
Paskhover and colleagues explain in JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery that the distortion happens in selfies because the face is such a short distance from the camera lens. In a recent study, they calculated distortion of facial features at different camera distances and angles.
You know what you look like because you have often seen yourself in the mirror. But then why do some like how they look in the mirror but not in pictures? This is the mere exposure effect, which was conceptualized by Robert Zajonc, a psychologist, in 1968 (via Psychology Today).
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.
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.
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.
One feature that determines facial attractiveness (as cited in psychology literature), is the ratio of the distances between the various facial landmarks. Facial landmarks are features like the corner of the eyes, tip of the nose, lowest point on the chin, etc.
The front facing camera does not mirror the video it takes. It mirrors the display when you are taking it, so it looks like what you would see in a mirror. The saved video is in the correct orientation. This is done to aid in taking the photos and videos.