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How to Make a Face Swap App like MSQRD?

Alexander Prokopiev
Alexander Prokopiev CEO of ARTJOKER
9 min read

MSQRD is one of the popular swap faces app that does an amazing job at animating users' faces in all sorts of whimsical ways. With the development of various technologies in the field of cyber building, we can notice the rapid development of various multimedia and, especially, photo editing and swapping apps like MSQRD or Snapchat. Because of the popularity of the highlighted applications, it is absolutely not strange to see a lot of primary developers trying to develop something similar to these popular apps. Find here pieces of advice on how to build a face swap app, if you want to succeed in such way too.

Best Face Swapping Apps

1. Snapchat

Snapchat is a multimedia instant messaging app with face swapping feature. Snapchat is very popular app and has 363 million daily active users worldwide. Using Snapchat, you don't have to cut out faces before you make the swap. Just find the Face Swap effect in the lenses and stand next to the friend you want to swap faces with. This video face swap app will swap your faces quickly and easily. In addition to the face swapping feature, this app offers users incredible video and photo capture capabilities. Any user can download Snapchat for free on most popular platforms, including Android and iOS.

2. Reface

Reface allows users to swap faces in real time. This app is famous for its unique and realistic face editing features. The developers are constantly improving the application and adding new templates to outperform other swap face apps. Reface offers users a wide range of GIF collections, filters and images. Reface has a clear and user-friendly user interface, as well as allows users to create high quality videos. You can download and use this app for free, but a subscription will give you unlimited access, enhanced features, no ads, and the ability to shoot videos without watermarks.

3. Face Swap Live

The Face Swap Live app allows users to swap faces before they take a picture. This app changes faces and applies masks in real time. Unlike other face swapping apps, this one has some inaccuracies, but nevertheless it does its job well and is popular. Have fun with your friends and try out different facial expressions while putting your face on your best friend's face. This app also has a photo face swap feature, so users can become their favorite celebrity easily. Face Swap Live offers users a variety of different facial effects to choose from. Users can either take selfies before applying the effect or import an existing image. This picture face swap app is available for both Android and iOS.

4. Faceover

Faceover can swap your face with a friend's face and make different faces of many people simultaneously. The application is suitable both for high-quality face swapping and for ordinary photo editing. Users can cut and flip faces, even if there are more than two people in the photo. Faceover is available both for Android and iOS devices. This app to swap faces in pictures is easy to use and produces realistic results. Furthermore, Faceover allows you to create funny videos and GIFs. Faceover Pro opens all the features of the app to users, allows unlimited face sharing, and disables ads.

5. FaceApp

FaceApp allows users to edit photos and apply various effects such as mask, age, smile and more. Users can also use this face swap application to change their gender, hair color, add beard, and more. FaceApp has many backgrounds, effects, and AI filters. The developers are constantly improving the app and adding new filters and faces. It is one of the best face swapping and photo editing apps with artificial intelligence. The free version of the FaceApp has limited features, to open all the features you will need to buy a subscription to the professional version. FaceApp demonstrates the wonderful capabilities of AI in mobile apps. FaceApp is available on both Android and iOS platforms.

6. B612

B612 is a user-friendly photo editor with the Face Swap function. B612 was originally a simple photo editor, but later the developers implemented the feature of swapping faces in photos and videos. The app allows users to apply various filters to photos and videos. Filters include animals, actors, singers, cartoon characters, etc. B612 provides the ability to create montages and GIFs. This app that swaps faces in video has a beauty feature that allows users to improve their expression and facial features. Unfortunately, the Face Swap feature is only available in real time and users cannot apply it to previously taken photos. Among the highlights, you can use B612 to swap faces with your pets. The app is available for free for Android and iOS.

7. Cupace

Cupace is a popular mobile app to swap face in photo. To improve the face swapping process, you can zoom in on the image to cut out the face as accurately as possible. In addition to face swapping, users can use the app to create collages and montages using a wide range of templates. The application smoothly and accurately crops the image and then inserts any picture you want. Users can add their face to any other photo, not necessarily people, even animals, or inanimate objects. The app also has a large collection of memes, stickers, masks, emoji, effects, and texts. All edited photos are stored in the app's gallery, and you can open and view them whenever you want.

8. MSQRD

MSQRD is a cross-platform app where you can swap faces. With this app, you can become a cute animal, a superhero, a celebrity, or just swap faces with your friends. Users of this app can also broadcast videos live on Facebook using masks and other visual effects. The app has a large gallery of filters, tools, and effects. Users can share their photos and videos that they edit with MSQRD on any social network. MSQRD is one of the easiest and most popular face swapping applications at the moment. The app recognizes the user's face well and adapts to it, producing a realistic result. Furthermore, this application is completely free and does not take up much memory space.

9. Face Swap Booth

Face Swap Booth allows users to change faces in multiple photos, swap faces with superstars, or animals, and apply different effects to photos. The app automatically changes faces in photos with high accuracy. To take full advantage of Face Swap Booth, as well as remove ads and watermarks, you will need to purchase the premium version. You can add and change faces manually, or let the app do it automatically. In addition to replacing faces completely, you can change parts of the face, such as eyes, nose, mouth, or several parts at once. You can download Face Swap Booth for free for both Android and iOS.

10. MixBooth

With MixBooth, you can quickly and easily transform yourself into a movie star, an animal, a singer, or another famous person. All you have to do is select the photo with the face you would like to use, then the app will automatically do a quality face swap. Users can take photos directly in the app, or import them from a gallery or social network. MixBooth allows users to share their creations on social networks. MixBooth is available for free for both iOS and Android. The app is quite popular and has over 5 million downloads on Google Play.

What Makes Face Swapping Apps Like MSQRD so Popular?

To be honest, the answer to this particular question is pretty simple. That extreme popularity is based on the fact that after the emergence of such unusual extensions, people get the opportunity to have more fun while using their smartphones. I believe that as a developer or a businessman, you have to understand that people often use the Internet and applications for fun. As a result, these fancy applications give them the opportunity to have those emotions and feelings they previously did not have.

How to Make a Face Swap App like MSQRD?

It can be concluded that the usage of these apps and the process of building them have to be focused on the implementation of the different features, which on the one hand will be able to impress people, while on the other hand may be similar to those that already exist, such as MSQRD and Snapchat. So, let us examine on what are apps like MSQRD based on and how to develop something similar.

What is Google cloud API?

Google Cloud API is the tool that makes the operation of MSQRD so simple and fast. It acts as the key foundation for that mobile app. If you want to create a mobile app for face swap, Google Cloud API is a must-have. So, you may not know what API actually is. API is simply a set of different classes, procedures, structures, and functions that exist in a solid bunch within a cloud.

Moreover, API is what identifies the strong link between your device and that particular cloud with the enormous layers of information within it. Let me also give you a small example of how API is used. For example, you have your website, for instance, the web page of the company. While on the webpage, there is a map taken from Google Maps service that shows a spot that identifies the location of your office in a given city.

So, when Google gives you all the needed information and automatically implements all the settings for the map, this is a pure example of how API is used. Later, I would also tell you how the API is used within MSQRD and similar extensions.

What are the Distinguishing Features of MSQRD

Foremost, I would like to give you a small list of special features of MSQRD that actually made that application so popular and widespread and the reason more than 2 million people now use it.

How to Make a Face Swap App like MSQRD? - 1

Miracles of the usage of the Vision API. While talking about the key special features of that alliance between Vision API and MSQRD, we must notice that it provides the users with several opportunities:

  1. Recognition of the face, based on X, Y and Z coordination programming;
  2. Detection of prohibited materials and the provision of safe search, thanks to Google Safe Search;
  3. Understanding of the emotions and application of various patterns to your face according to the obtained data.

To be honest, these features are only the beginning of that list, even though it plays a key role. Another highly vital and essential thing we have to notice is the opportunity of face swapping, which is actually possible because of the existence of the first point. So, you can change the faces on the photo in several fast and easy clicks.

It is also important to mention another feature, which is life selfies. This feature allows you to take selfies while adding different interesting and funny patterns on the screen in real time. For example, you can put on your face anything from the ears and nose of a puppy or a kitten to the face of PM Menachem Begin or Joker. All that is again possible because of Internet connection and the work of Vision API.

Finally, let me highlight another, maybe the most outstanding, feature of this type of application. It can identify your real-time emotions and implement different images according to them. Pretty surprising, isn't it? Perhaps now you already understand why MSQRD is so popular and widespread?

How to Build a Face Swap App?

If you want to create a face swap app like MSQRD, now we will tell you everything about this process. Millions of people around the world download face swap apps for iOS and Android. Due to the great popularity of this type of application, many successful companies are interested in creating such an application. Let's take a look at how to determine your target audience, what technology to choose, what features and functions to include in your app, and how to hire a development team to make your app as valuable as MSQRD.

Know Your Target Audience

Before you start to make your own face swap app, you should clarify the portrait of your target audience. Not all users of social networks, or students, will use photo editors with face swapping and filtering functions. If we take the general situation, such applications are most popular and in demand among a young audience, from 15 to 25 years, who have spare time, like to sit in social networks and can allocate some time for fun.

Decide on Technology

The next thing you need to think about before you start to make face swap app for Android and iPhone, you need to identify all the technologies you require to develop it. You have to find out what technologies exist and how they work to decide which one is best for your needs. You also have to analyze whether there are any legal issues associated with using this technology.

Think of Unique Features

While developing an extension like MSQRD app for android or iOS, you may think about the various other exciting features you can include in the application to make it more interesting.

  1. Add more fascinating and various masks. In MSQRD, there are already different sets of intriguing and unusual masks that people use in their photos. To be honest, in the field of such applications, it is highly important to enforce your fantasy in any possible way and try to imagine and manufacture something unusual. The more unusual it is, the better for you.
  2. Add effects. Try to think of the brightest and the most fascinating effects that can be added to the app. Create as many as possible. If people dislike them, you can always remove them. Remember that shortage is usually worse than surplus.
  3. Try to also think about video. For example, you can launch a live video broadcast with the opportunity to add different effects in the real time, so people can see how you spend your time using the app.

How and Where to Hire Face Swap App Developers?

Once you have identified the target audience, decided on the technology, and thought of the features you want to add to the app, it's time to start building it. To develop an app, you will need to hire a software development team. Competent app developers will be able to create an app that will run on a variety of devices without any problems.

Definitely, while thinking about the development of apps like MSQRD for iOS or for other platforms, you may have to take into consideration the process of hiring people for the development process.

As I have mentioned earlier, the development of such app is a long and complicated process, so you must look for programmers that can really help Moreover, good MSQRD-like app should not only have a good and clean code but also a developed back-end system based on reliable hosting.

So, you may ask where should I look for developers? I will respond by saying that you have two options. The first one is expensive and easy, and the second one is much cheaper but more complicated. If you have a lot of money, or you have a sponsor, you can go for the most highly rated development agencies in the USA, Australia, or UK.

This works only if the cost of developing the face swap app is not significant at all. But if you are an enterprising businessman, you may search for opportunities to save your money. And that opportunity is the second approach. The approach itself is predominant in INDIA and only in that part of Asia.

How much Does it Cost to Develop a Face Swap App Like MSQRD

Apart from deciding which developer to go with, we have to consider timing and prices because time is money and mobile app development is not an exception. In the process of developing an app like MSQRD, there are several stages of that complicated process, which will take a certain amount of time, where each minute equals money. So to make things clear, it is important to write down all the stages:

  • Editing emojis and changing colors = 24-32 hours;
  • Sharing multimedia via social networks = 10 hours;
  • Photo editing = 80 hours;
  • Push notifications = 20-24 hours;
  • Authorization via Facebook = 6 hours;
  • Rating = 8-12 hours.

Definitely, MSQRD app development cost here, in Bangalore, for instance, is much lower and is in the range of $15 to $70 per hour. I am doubting that you will argue that this is worse than the average price in Australia, which goes for $150 per hour.

However, in India, there is a big "but". That "but" means that you have to spend long hours, days, and even months hiring face swap app developers. In the process of outsourcing the development process, try to look up every possible information about the company, find all the feedback, ratings, news, and stories about the company. If they have had an issue before, they are likely going to have the same issue again in the future.

So only look for those teams whose reputation is made of marble and covered with diamonds. Only then will you be able to get a perfect outcome and the successful realization of all your ideas. I am strongly convinced that we have to keep in mind that there are different aspects that influence the entire process of app development.

How to Make a Face Swap App like MSQRD? - 2

It is important to emphasize that in Asia, especially India, despite the low prices and really well-educated programmers, there is a pretty late level of security. It is absolutely common for a beginner there to face such problems as data stealing, piracy, and plagiarism. Furthermore, a lot of the programmers whom you should trust may just take your idea and disappear forever.

This is why you should choose ARTJOKER as your partner. Our company does not only offer good and low prices to customers, but is also ready to provide customers with proper security level and highly professional support. Furthermore, we can develop not only mobile apps for changing faces, but also pc apps.

For instance, talking about the number of hours spent on the development of such an app, it would be appropriate to say that regardless of the software used to build the app, it takes approximately more than 120 hours. So, the development of the basic functions such as editing or posting will take up to 80 hours, while the creation of proper sharing net takes nearly 10 hours. However, the creation of rates, authorization, and notifications takes 24, 12 and 8 hours respectively.

Conclusions

In all, the creation of a MSQRD-like app is a long and highly complicated process, but nobody said that it is impossible. To make your dream coming true in that field, the things you need are: Good plan, Good Team, as well as Imagination and fantasy mixed with passion. And in that case, you will be able to achieve your goals undoubtedly, which will have more positive outcomes for your plans and career. So do not hesitate, after reading this article, to start drawing a plan for the skeleton of your app and search for the best programmers in Southern Asia.

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