Chanel’s new Lipscanner app review: Virtual lipstick tester

Chanel’s new Lipscanner app review: Virtual lipstick tester

Online shopping is nothing new, but when it comes to make-up, the pandemic has completely changed the way we shop.

As we can no longer head to a beauty counter or play with samples on the shelves at Boots, buying beauty bits such as a foundation that matches your skin tone exactly or the perfect nude lipstick can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Especially if you feel you’re always in-between shades, or can’t quite figure out your undertone. One of the biggest problems with make-up shopping online is that if the colour or shade doesn’t work for you, returning it is often not an option, so you’re stuck with something you’ll never use again.

However, some of the world’s biggest cosmetic brands have invested in specialist technology that allows you to try on products without ever leaving the sofa.

Mac, Maybelline, Charlotte Tilbury and Bobbi Brown, to name a few, all have virtual try-on services, some with just lipsticks, others across foundation, eyeshadow and highlighting products too. It typically involves uploading a picture to their website or using your webcam to try on different shades in real-time with the help of artificial intelligence.

Chanel is the latest brand to get in on the AI action, having created its debut Lipscanner app. It features a colour scanner that allows you to find a lipstick shade from the brand’s 400-plus collection, simply by scanning shades, pictures or even nature around you using your phone, before virtually trying it on to see how it suits you and adding it to your shopping basket if you’re a fan.

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We loved the idea that you could scan your favourite bag, flower or book and find the corresponding lipstick shade. And if you’ve ever spotted someone in a magazine wearing what looks to be your dream lip colour, without knowing what it was they were wearing, this app could solve your woes.

It’s not the first of its kind, however. US-based app Flawless by Mime operates in a similar way, identifying shades from a picture you upload and then recommending various make-up products such as nail polish or lipsticks from a variety of brands.

You can read reviews from other users who have tried it, and it will recommend a retailer to shop with, however, unlike Lipscanner, it doesn’t offer a virtual try-on service.

As an industry leader in luxury beauty, a Chanel lipstick is certainly an investment, costing upwards of £30, so if you get it wrong, it’s a costly mistake. We’re hoping this new Lipscanner app will ensure you can still enjoy make-up shopping in a pandemic and get it right every time.

Ahead, we breakdown exactly how the innovative technology works and just how accurate the colour-matching tool is.

You can trust our independent reviews. We may earn commission from some of the retailers, but we never allow this to influence selections. This revenue helps us to fund journalism across The Independent.

Chanel Lipscanner app: Download for free on Apple store

The app launched on Monday 22 February (The Independent/Chanel)

How does it work?

Put simply, the French beauty brand has created a recognition engine that allows you to scan anything around you – it could be a pair of shoes, nail polish or a bouquet of flowers – and it will suggest the closest shade of Chanel lipstick that matches it.

If it’s an item that has more than one shade, there’s a colour-picking feature that allows you to select the exact shade you’re looking to match, before it analyses it and recommends a lipstick.

Rather than just presenting you with one lipstick that matches what you’ve scanned, it suggests two or three finishes – matte, satin, metallic or gloss – depending on what that shade is available in.

You can then use the virtual try-on setting to test it on your lips and take a selfie with a three-second countdown, which you can share with friends, on social media or save to your camera roll.

We scanned a bouquet of flowers and got a pretty accurate match (The Independent/Chanel/Louise Whitbread)

If you’re happy with your match, you can then shop the lipstick in your preferred finish direct via the Chanel website.

According to the brand, “The app offers an intuitive, seamless and rapid experience, enabling users to scan any colour and visualise Chanel’s interpretation on themselves.”

It’s a cleverly designed app that reportedly took months of development to create an algorithm that could work on thousands of different facial images and take into consideration skin tone and lip shape. Future lipstick product launches will also be added to the app, which will be continuously updated.

How accurate is it?

Once you’ve downloaded the app, navigating your way through is easy. As soon as you open it the camera is on and it encourages you to take a photo or choose one from your library.

Firstly we scanned a bouquet of faux flowers that have a vibrant orange rose that’s vivid but hard to imagine in a flattering lipstick shade.

In less than a second it analysed the photo, before telling you to tap the screen to select a colour, we chose the darker outside petal shade, which is a marmalade orange.

It then takes you through to a matte, satin or glossy lipstick that was spot on, complete with shade name and number. Simply click try it on and it opens up your camera ready for a selfie.

The try-on feature is our favourite, it’s fun to play with different colours and while the picture quality isn’t as good as our usual iPhone camera, it gives a very accurate depiction of what the lipstick would actually look like on your lips.

The app does a stellar job at representing a gloss, satin or matte lipstick finish (The Independent/Chanel/Louise Whitbread)

It fits exactly to your lip shape and just looks like you’ve applied it in person. When we tried out the different finishes, it does a stellar job at representing a gloss, satin or matte finish.

We also loved the added detailing with the try-on feature that meant as you moved around, smiled, opened and closed your mouth, the lipstick moved with each movement too, which added to its likeness of wearing the actual product.

Along with the flowers, we also scanned our current favourite nail polish, Nails Inc “caught in the nude tulum beach” (£8, Feelunique.com) which is a glossy brown, and again it brought up a near-exact match, which looked amazing as a glossy lip, and a shade we’ve never have found on our own.

Other items we scanned included a baby pink drawstring bag, which is a shade that’s tricky to master as it can often make you look washed out. When we tried on a satin version of the shade, it wasn’t a colour that worked well with our skin tone, but knowing that and not buying is just as helpful as finding a shade that works.

The verdict: Chanel’s Lipscanner app

We’re bowled over by the ingenious design and accurate colour matching Chanel has perfected. Just as it says, it’s a seamless, quick experience and is a useful and playful way of experimenting with shades you’re unsure of.

Obviously, you are restricted to Chanel lipstick matches, and it can’t identify more unique colours, such a bright green plant leaf, as it doesn’t have a lipstick in that shade, but if you’re looking for a new nude, pink, red, orange or purple, it’s ideal.

Overall it’s so helpful to decipher between two similar shades, or if you’ve yet to find a colour that matches exactly your favourite accessory or piece of jewellery. It’s particularly useful as Chanel lipsticks have a luxury price tag, so if you’re umming and ahhing or dying to buy your first ever lipstick from the brand, this is the best personal shopping assistant you’ll find.

To see the app live in action, head over to our IndyBest Instagram page

IndyBest product reviews are unbiased, independent advice you can trust. On some occasions, we earn revenue if you click the links and buy the products, but we never allow this to bias our coverage. The reviews are compiled through a mix of expert opinion and real-world testing.

Chanel’s AI Lipscanner app will find lipstick in any shade

The next time you spot a lip color that you like, you can quickly use AI to find a corresponding shade in Chanel’s range of lipsticks. The company is announcing today its new Lipscanner app that lets you use your phone’s camera to identify a hue — whether it’s on someone’s lips or just the color of your favorite purse. Then, it’ll suggest a match from Chanel’s “lip universe,” which includes more than 400 products encompassing different finishes and shades.

This isn’t the first time a beauty company has made an app to identify lipstick shades — YSL’s Perso system will even print out the exact color you scan, making it more sophisticated. Lipscanner will also allow you to virtually “try on” the lipstick to see if you like it. To be clear, digital makeup try-on features are also not new — Sephora, Benefit and many other big brands in beauty and cosmetics have made their own versions.

That’s not even counting the numerous selfie-editing apps out there like YouCam Makeup with tie-ins that let their users try on and buy makeup. But Chanel is one of the biggest brands in the world and has a massive fanbase that will likely appreciate finding the exact product number for something they’ve coveted after spotting it on Instagram.

Chanel

As the beauty and tech industries continue to collaborate and intersect, personalized skincare and cosmetic products are becoming increasingly common. That’s good news for people with specific needs, and should hopefully foster more inclusion and diversity, though companies must be careful to not alienate customers by making their customizable products too expensive.

Chanel Lipscanner: How to match your perfect lipstick

(Pocket-lint) - Chanel’s Lipscanner app enables you to scan any image, find a corresponding Chanel lip product in the colour and texture of the image you’ve scanned and then virtually try it on.

Pinterest offers a Try On feature within its app, allowing you to try on different lipstick shades from brands including MAC, Charlotte Tilbury and Bobbi Brown, but Chanel’s Lipscanner takes this one step further by offering the image scanning functionality.

Here’s how Chanel Lipscanner works and how to use it to find your perfect corresponding Chanel lipstick from any image.

Chanel’s Lipscanner app will detect any colour and texture from any image - physical or digital - and find a matching Chanel lip product. All of Chanel’s lip products are available in the app’s catalogue - more than 400 - and the app won’t just find the closest match, but it will detect the finish too, whether matt, satin or gloss.

You can scan anything from a cup, cushion, friend, bag in a magazine, lips from a poster, or upload an image from your library, perhaps a screenshot of an Instagram image or a picture of yourself with a lippy on that you loved but need a replacement. The Lipscanner app will then use its algorithm to detect the colour and texture of your scan and provide you with an equivalent Chanel lip product, which you can then try on virtually and take a photo, or buy from the Chanel website.

Not every match is flawless, and sometimes the app doesn’t get it completely right - possibly because an equivalent Chanel shade doesn’t exist - but the idea is great and we’ve loved using it to discover new shades.

Finding a Chanel lipstick that matches a digital or physical image you’ve seen and loved a colour in it is very easy.

Download the Chanel Lipscanner app on your iOS device. Open the Chanel Lipscanner app. Scan a colour or some lips from a magazine, poster etc. You can either use an image from your library or take a photo in the app. Tap the screen to select a colour to match and move the cursor to select a colour. Tap on “Find the Chanel Match”. Swipe right to left on the options. The finish is shown at the top. Tap on “Try It On” or “Purchase on Chanel.com”. The Lipscanner app will automatically apply the lipstick to your lips when you bring your face into view if you select Try It On, or take you to the exact product on the Chanel website if you select the purchase option. You can take a picture within the Try It On section, which you can then share if you want to. The Chanel colour match name will appear in the top right of the picture. Tap on the arrow in the top left of the screen to come away from the Try It On screen and back to the results screen.

By tapping the arrow, you can also try on other shades that have been selected as a result of your scan. To see all your scans, head back to the initial take a photo or choose one from your library screen.

From here, you’ll see a lipstick icon in the top left corner. This is where all of your scans and results are stored. No photos you take of you trying the lipsticks on are stored within the app. You’ll find these in the Photos app of your iPhone instead.

Note: You’ll need to allow Lipscanner to access your camera.

Best iPhone apps 2021: The ultimate guide By Maggie Tillman · 23 February 2021

Writing by Britta O’Boyle.