This is because the reflection you see every day in the mirror is the one you perceive to be original and hence a better-looking version of yourself. So, when you look at a photo of yourself, your face seems to be the wrong way as it is reversed than how you are used to seeing it.
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.
The mirror is a reflection.
It's a reflection, so it shows how we look like in reverse. Because we're so used to seeing the reverse version of ourselves, seeing how we look in pictures can be jarring. And unless you're blessed with a perfectly symmetrical face, the photo version of yourself can be even more wonky.
The width of the lens, as well as your distance from the camera, can make you look larger or smaller in photos than you do in person or in the mirror. But rest assured that most times, this is truly an optical illusion based on the photography equipment you use and the clothes you wear.
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.
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.
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.
People see the outside appearance, like a picture or mirror reflection. That is you.
The image you see in the mirror is inverted. Other people see you the way you appear in a photograph, not the way you appear in the mirror.
“Which is more true, the mirror or the camera?” The camera is objective. It simply records an image. The mirror requires your eyes to see the image, and your brain to interpret the image.
“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.
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.
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.
Mirror feedback, from webcams and reflective surfaces, doesn't accurately tell us how we look. With more time spent staring at ourselves than ever, that poses a couple of problems to our delicate self-esteems.
But if we compare the selfie image and mirror, mirror is more accurate because selfie picture differes with phones and app you use to take selfie. If you compre the selfie taken with phone camera and messenger, instagram, you will find difference in quality and focal length as well.
Why you look “fatter" in a photo has to do with the camera lens. More specifically the focal length. Shorter focal lengths such as wide-angle lenses, or a cell phone camera for example make the subject look larger. Longer focal lengths will make the subject look more true to size.
Stand in front of a mirror with your left eye closed and and the closed eye is on the left side of the reflection. Unless your hair style, face and expressions are perfectly symmetrical, your picture and your reflection look different because they ARE different - they are reversed.
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.
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.
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.
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.