Focal length makes a real difference. Cell phone cameras have a really hard time with that; that's why photos from a selfie stick look better than just holding the camera, even at arms length.
Imo mirror selfies do on average tend to look a lot better. I think a lot of it must be that the photo is taken from further away. This causes two things...
The picture isn't a detailed because the shot is simply further away. Wrinkles, acne, and other imperfections are not as clear or pronounced.
Features like your nose, chin, eyes, etc. appear smaller in far shots than close shots. In close shots, there is a bit of a "fisheye" effect due to the perspective, even if you aren't using a fisheye lens. It exaggerates a lot of facial features and isn't how you normally see yourself when you're looking into the mirror because you just aren't that close.
No, it's just just "because the image is flipped" which is what is repeated ad nauseum online. The biggest thing is the second point I mentioned.
There was a gif out there somewhere that very simply and easily demonstrates this phenomenon of how wildly different your facial features can look from this.
Ironically, the mirror is the one most likely to be misrepresenting your image. In addition to being a flipped image of what you look like, anything but the most perfectly flat piece of glass is slightly distorting your proportions. And some mirrors are built to intentionally distort your appearance to make you appear more flattering to yourself.
Common misconception. Mirrors reflect images, but do not flip them. If you put two items next to each other, their order is preserved in the reflection, not inverted.
The reason people think mirrors are flipped is because writing on shirts appear backwards, but that's because your shirt is facing the wrong direction. Write a word on something clear and hold it up to a mirror. It's not flipped. Put the word up against your chest like it was written on your shirt. Notice how you flipped the word in order to do that.
It is flipped. The mirror is showing you the reverse side of the card, so the image in the mirror is flipped twice. Two flips make a normal. A person looking at that card from the mirror side would see it as reversed, but the mirror flips it again so it looks normal to you.
Most phone cameras also have a much wider focal length than our eyes though, which makes faces look a bit skinnier. I definitely look better in wide angle than in reality or telephoto.
Took me until my 20s to figure out that this is why I look like shit in close up photos. Phone cameras make my nose look suuuper disproportionately large. It's a relief that I look better irl.
To help stem the downvotes from people who don't understand, if you take a picture of a vase with various mm lenses from the same distance and then crop to the size of the vase, every picture will be the same. It's only distance that matters. Taking 20 pictures in a grid really close to your face with a telephoto lens and stitching them together into a single picture will result in a wide angle shot.
I didn't notice for a while that by default the camera on my Pixel 8 was using a filter that makes your eyes and lips bigger. Every time I open the camera, I have to turn off the filter because there's no way to change what the default filter is.
That's shocking. I'm currently evaluating my prejudice as that sounds like such a Samsung thing to do (as much as I hate Google and alphabet, I thought the Android crew were fairly upright)
The depth perception also makes quite a difference. The side of your face can clearly be seen in a mirror to be the side of your face, but depending on lighting, the side of your face can look as if it's part of the front of your face in a picture as you don't have the depth perception. The result is that photos make you look fatter than your mirror image would.
Flip your selfies along the Y-axis. Most phones have a setting to do this automatically. That's the "you" that you're most used to seeing in a mirror. It won't fix everything, like the limitations of focal length, lighting, or camera quality, but if you're the type to really obsess over how much "worse" you look in selfies, that trick can do a lot.
According to YouTube wisdom, people don’t like seeing themselves in images because they’re not mirrored like people are used to. Camera apps nowadays “correct” for that and do mirror the image for preview.
Camera apps nowadays “correct” for that and do mirror the image for preview
Huh, I always thought people who post flipped photos are just technically challenged (and/or have really poor eye for detail to not notice it). Never considered someone doing that on purpose just to further their own delusion of what they look like.
Or maybe it's just what the camera defaults to and they don't bother changing it because why would you? Which is a more reasonable assumption than calling them delusional