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  • There are a lot of ways to take a picture of yourself.

  • But if you look carefully, something's not quite right about your close-ups.

  • Selfies can make our faces look weird and it's changing the way we see ourselves,

  • and the decisions we make about our facial features.

  • A lot of people think their nose looks big in selfies and it's driving them to get nosejobs.

  • A 2017 poll found that 55% of facial plastic surgeons saw patients who wanted surgeries

  • to make them look better in selfies.

  • That was an increase of 13% from 2016.

  • But those complaints are often due to a distortion

  • created by the distance between a camera and a subject.

  • This is what a portrait looks like from five feet away.

  • And this is what it looks like from one foot away,

  • about the distance that most people are taking selfies.

  • That's a huge difference in facial structures, especially the nose.

  • A team of researchers found that taking a photo from one foot away,

  • makes the base of the nose look about 30% larger

  • and the tip look 7% larger, than they would from a further distance.

  • From five feet away, your features are flattened.

  • From a foot, your nose is exaggerated.

  • So the parts of your face that are close to the camera,

  • look bigger than they actually are.

  • It's as if the nose is in the foreground and the ears are in the background, instead of

  • being on the same plane.

  • For now, long arms and selfie sticks are your best bet.

  • But phone camera software might one day be able to alter images with a treatment that

  • simulates the effect of a distant camera.

  • Researchers at Princeton created a tool that can manipulate the position and distance between a camera and the subject,

  • after the photo was taken.

  • So a close-up selfie like this, can be made to look like it's taken at a more flattering,

  • natural distance.

  • It's not perfect,

  • but a version of this technology could help design the right tool for a forward-facing camera,

  • one that will make our selfies feel more like us.

There are a lot of ways to take a picture of yourself.

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