You’re going to want to update your app for this.
Facebook has just launched a new feature on their app. It’s a new camera on the news feed which allows you to send and share creative and fun photos.
Once you’ve updated the app, you’ll be able to access the camera through the camera icon on the top left of your news feed. Once that’s open, it will bring you to a new camera feature which allows you to use masks, frames, slogans and styles on live photos.
You can take a photo, add a filter or a mask to your face and then send it directly to another person or post it to your own profile. Once someone replies to your photo with a message, you will be able to have a conversation within the app. If you receive a photo, you can open it initially and then you have one repeat option to open it within the next 24 hours.
They first did a small test on a similar update in Brazil around the time of the Olympics. They allowed users from Brazil and Canada to have a face painting filter through a camera feature. People were able to take a normal photo and then get the colours of their country painted on their faces.
After that, they decided to expand their ideas and came up with more filters and augmented reality effects which are now in the new update.
It’s quite like Snapchat, but the good thing about it is that you can access it within your Facebook app and can now share it with a much wider network of people who aren’t using other photo sharing apps.
Also, unlike Snapchat, it has a really cool feature where you get to react to what’s on your screen. The reactive effect lets you move images on the screen with your hand. For instance, at the moment it has a filter with falling leaves and you can move your hand in front of your face to brush away some of the leaves.
It also lets you add some pretty cool styles to the whole photo to make them look different.
We got to check it out in Facebook headquarters in Dublin and it’s a lot of fun. Our favourite filters were the Irish ones which featured different slogans and catchphrases such as, “Ah Grand”, “Some Craic”, and “Story Horse?”.
You will need to update the app to access the new camera experience and while rollout is starting today, not everyone will be able to see it initially. So quick – get in there before everyone else.
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