14 DAY TRIAL // Coco Chanel once said "There are no ugly women, just lazy ones". What does this mean? Well, it means that few are those who are born beautiful, most of us must work our way to looking good. This generally means make-up, hair style and color, skin care, diets, fitness and the list continues. All this means work, difficult decisions and considerable expenses. That's why most women must not be "lazy", if they wish to show a pretty face.
Decades after Coco Chanel, both men and women leave laziness behind and get busy in salons, hair-dressers, SPAs and gyms in order to look their best. However, in spite of good intentions, hard work (perhaps a little too hard?) and large expenses, some people sadly present esthetic failures and disturbing makeovers: bad hair colors, too much make-up, irritated skin, destroyed hair and so on. Keeping esthetic balance proves difficult nowadays, when options and next-to-unbelievable promises are so tempting.
When you're over fifteen, you probably shouldn't play with your look, you must seek professional help whenever you feel the need of a make-over and never boldly go where no one has gone before. One must think not twice, but ten times before making a dramatic change in their look. Since we don't have a rewind option when it comes to style choices, it's would be very helpful to be able to see how we would look if we do choose to change our style for another.
Drawing on a picture of yourself could be an option, but a poor one. That won't do for the 21st century Fox, not to mention the freshly-arisen metrosexual man. One much better option involves your computer. I'm referring to professional software that allows you to see how you would look like with various hair colors, shapes, styles, textures, with changed complexion, different make-up and whatever else you can think of.
Beauty Wizard is such a piece of software that allows you to easily modify a person's appearance, by using their photo. The program keeps the face and adds different hair styles, colors, make-up, bronze effects. This can be made for both ladies and gentlemen, the program stores no less then 51 hair styles for men and you can manually customize the color, so options are unlimited.
Once you've launched the program, you'll see a window composed of three parts. The one on the left, the largest, contains the main picture of the face, the picture you'll be working on. The center contains two tabs, one called Hairstyle, and the other Make-up. The third part of the window is the Gallery, where you'll store the pictures you like most.
The window on the left has various triangle-shaped buttons that can be used to adjust sizes and volumes; you can shrink and stretch the face and the hair-style, you can fix the hairstyle on the head with high precision, so that it looks natural. It's like trying on wigs, only more comfortable, because this requires just a few clicks.
Customization of hair and make-up will be done by using the options contained in the two tabs, Hairstyle and Make-up. Hair can be customized by choosing hair-color (natural or special) and hairstyle. Hairstyles are grouped in five categories: Short, Medium, Long, Special and Male and each category is very rich.
Make-up options are various as well: you can choose shadows, pencils, lipstick and customize their color, and then apply them on the face. You can put on contact lens and see yourself through differently colored eyes. Skin complexion can be changed also; you can go from very light skin tones to dark bronzed ones. Save the combinations you liked best in the Gallery and choose your new make-over.
Once you've made up your mind about you future style, you can just print the customized pictures and take them to a stylist. From here on, it's his job to do your hair and make-up as you desired and make you look your best.
The Good
If you're the kind of person that often changes style and appearance you will find Beauty Wizard very useful as you'll be able to better choose your next make-over and it will keep you away from esthetic disaster. I particularly liked the hairstyle options because of the large variety (hundreds of hair-pieces) and they also include men's hairstyles. The gallery was also nice because you have all your options grouped and you can judge with more ease which style you feel suites you best. Beauty Wizard can improvise for you at a click of a button, but you'll probably just be left with a good laugh. It can be used by professionals to show their clients previews of what they will look like after the make-over.
The Bad
The trial software does not allow opening a picture or a "face file". That means you can only try it on the default model. I didn't like how the make-up was applied; it did not look exactly natural. Graphics could have been better and, for a Beauty Wizard, it should have looked nicer. Also, it's a little too expensive.
The Truth
After you've tried this program, the truth?does not exactly look true anymore. Aside from the joke, the program will give you an idea about how you would look like with various style options, but it's far from the real thing; it looks fake, as any remodeled picture looks. But it is helpful for getting a general idea about how you look with different styles and nothing you try on in Beauty Wizard is irreparable damage. Don't like it? Just go back and start over!
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
