Photo and image editing apps - statistics & facts

Photo and selfie editors

While several social media platforms – such as Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok – provide users with filters, masks, and stickers to edit their content, standalone editing apps can provide premium features to retouch photos and pictures in detail. Facetune, launched in 2013, and Facetune 2, launched in 2016, are among the most popular photo editing apps available to global users. Developed by Jerusalem-based Lightricks, Facetune saw 4.66 million downloads during the third quarter of 2022. The app experienced a peak during the middle of 2020, amassing almost 15 million downloads from global users during the second quarter of the year and becoming a widely recognized brand thanks to its usage on Instagram. Facetune helps users to edit their photos, as well as to change their facial and body characteristics in selfies and replace the background of their images. The app allows users a seven-day free trial, before monetizing via subscription or a one-time payment: in the third quarter of 2022, Facetune generated around 21 million U.S. dollars in revenues, with the North and Latin American regions representing the company’s largest markets.

AI moves on to photo editing

One of the latest commercial applications of artificial intelligence positions itself in photo editing apps. Lensa AI, developed by the U.S.-based Prisma Labs and launched in 2018, allows users to input between 10 and 20 photos and selfies thanks to its “magic avatars” feature, introduced in November 2022. The photos submitted are used as a base to produce AI-generated renderings and avatars, editing the users’ appearance and background digitally to turn the original images into artwork. At the beginning of December 2022, the Lensa AI app recorded over 5.8 million downloads from users worldwide, as well as topping the ranking of the highest-grossing photo and video editing apps in the U.S., surpassing both Canva and Facetune.

Observers were quick to raise questions concerning the ethic of applying artificial intelligence to personal images, as well as pointing out the possible copyright problems of training AI with original art available on the internet. Additionally, while Lensa users retain all rights to their portraits, the company holds rights to the artistic renderings generated.

Despite the controversies, the app’s global revenues skyrocketed to over nine million U.S. dollars in the first days of December, up by almost seven times the 1.35 million U.S. dollars generated in November 2022. Lensa AI offers a free trial with the possibility of purchasing 50 avatars at a discounted price, before asking users to subscribe.

Unfiltered: why users choose to show their real selves

Despite the popularity of apps in this category, digital face filters have encountered criticism from users and social institutions alike, as the tendency to beautify and enhance some features while hiding others have been noted to have a possible adverse impact on users’ self-perception and mental well-being. As of mid-2022, over half of U.S. internet users reported that their social media presence did not reflect their real life at all, while 30 percent reported that feeling their social media output and self-portraying represented the reality of their lives a little.

In 2021, an average of 33 percent of respondents who spent up to or more than three hours daily engaging with social media reported thinking that this medium had a negative impact on societal well-being. Teenagers and Gen Z users have been particularly receptive to the harm of social media exposure, as well as advocating for more realistic portraits of their offline lives in social media experiences: according to a survey of U.S. users conducted in September 2021, 45 percent of Gen Z users felt too much pressure to be perfect on social media, while 42 percent believed people ought to show more of their “real” selves online. Additionally, Gen Z users appeared to be also more open to trying social app BeReal, which prompts users once per day into posting an unfiltered double-screened photo of themselves and their surroundings, no matter how unglamorized or ordinary they might look.