A Fun World Of Social Media Digital Filters

Looking At The Loveable Side Of Social Media Digital Filters

This world is full of oh-so-serious news and drab daily requirements of life that sometimes we just need a lighthearted, universally enjoyable escape, which is exactly what those wonderfully adorable and inexplicably entertaining social media digital filters provide. Have you ever wanted to take your Zoom calls on the Star Wars desert planet of Tatooine? Are you curious what your grandmother might look like in black metal facepaint or how your bearded boyfriend looks with ginormous Kewpie doll eyes and flushed red cheeks and lips? Maybe you just want to see your dog spew rainbows from its mouth when it barks? All these adventures and more are within your grasp–literally–thanks to the fun world of social media digital filters that are available by the truckload through your smartphone and digital devices. And, with the refinement of modern holograms by companies like IKIN, digital filters may be getting an upgrade.

A Brief History Of Social Media Digital Filters

That IG Look

This history of social media digital filters begins a decade back with Instagram. Unlike Facebook and other earlier, more traditionally defined social media platforms, which relied first and foremost on the written word, Instagram sought to distinguish itself through a visually-driven approach. With its launching in October 2010, Instagram included digital filters as part of the IG UX, inviting users to doctor their digital photos with extreme augmentations of light, color, and image quality. These blanket digital filters offered improvements on the comparatively low image quality of early smartphones, and they relied heavily on nostalgic applications of black and white, sepia, and sunkissed 70s-inspired retro finishes to digital photography. The popularity of heavy-handed digital filters waned on IG but resurfaced around 2018 as influencer “presets,” which ensured that all of a user’s photos carried their brand-specific look and color palette.

AR Digital Filters

Some of the most popular social media digital filters have come in the form of AR. This eye-catching approach was pioneered by the face-tracking tech of Ukrainian startup Looksery in 2015 and popularized later that year on Snapchat. Originally named Lenses, Snapchat’s AR face filters allowed users to drastically augment their face with masking filters and incorporate digital effects into the background and other parts of the frame. The result: now, you never have to wonder what your friends look like as cartoon dogs, what your girlfriend might look like if she were your boyfriend, or if you need to bring back emo. The popularity of Snapchat AR filters trickled down to other platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, which both offered their own digital filters by 2017. Today, AR filters are ubiquitous and the template many people use to understand AR technology.

Digital Backgrounds

In yet another approach to digital filters, the popular video conferencing platform Zoom introduced virtual backgrounds for video calls in 2016. Building their concept on film and video production practices that date back to the 1940s, Zoom started allowing users to easily replace their backgrounds with essentially any image of their choosing. This planted the seed for digital background variations, like the “background blur” feature introduced by Microsoft in 2018, and soon the other major players in video conferencing followed suit. By 2020, Skype, Google, Microsoft, Webex, and Facebook all offered digital background options to users. And in 2021, the branches of digital filters came together as Zoom introduced Studio Effects, which allowed users to apply entertaining face filters, just like those on Snapchat and other social media platforms, during video calls.

Mapping Fun: The Joyful Popularity Of Social Media Digital Filters

Digital filters have maintained as an ever-popular experience offered across multiple platforms–traditional social media sites, like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, as well as direct video conferencing options, like Zoom, Google Meet, and Skype. What started on Snapchat has flooded across all of mainstream social media, and, over the last couple of years, these platforms have offered a creative combination of digital filters.

Disney

Disney has been one of the most popularly trending themes for the last few years. AR Filters that generate Disney-esque oversized cartoon eyes have been staples on social media since the earliest years of AR social media filters. More recently, however,  IG has come to expand on this stylization by offering AR digital filters that can augment you into Snow White or the Little Mermaid, specifically. And, the Which Disney filter shows you–as the name suggests–which Disney character you are based on your face. (Don’t worry, there is a similar digital filter for identifying your Pokémon.) This filter uses the details of your face to match your look with a database of Disney characters.

Neon

Neon is also on the uptick with digital filters like Not So Basic and Neon II. The former will give you that Euphoria look by boosting your skin glow and adding some ultra-trendy neon eye makeup. The latter allows you to generate custom floating neon signs atop your face illuminating you and your environment with the appropriately colored neon sign glow.

Are Holograms The Next Evolution Of Social Media Digital Filters?

Each year, digital filters improve as the technology refines. In the early years of AR face filters, it was a common experience to see digital augmentations fall off a user’s face as they tilted their head or shifted their camera. These days, AR digital filters track movement with ease, creating the most seamless digital integrations yet. Similarly, digital backgrounds look more convincing as the technology grows smarter and more capable of differentiating user outlines from their backgrounds.

IKIN’s Developments In Dimensional Design

Visual solutions company IKIN has spent years refining the next generation of dimensional design that might offer a next step for digital filters. IKIN’s approach has been specifically geared toward modern holograms, which rely on patented AI-driven face-tracking technology to ensure accurate, naturalistic perspectives. This technology has overlap with the foundational mechanics of AR digital filters, which also rely on face-tracking. IKIN is currently beta and special testing a couple of dimensional platforms that can realize true holographic content that is visible with the naked eye in ambient light. In June 2021, IKIN demoed the IKIN ARC at ITEXPO, allowing event attendees to manipulate 3D holographic content in real-time. The RYZ, IKIN’s holographic platform for mobile, could be that bridge between the company’s tech and the mobile world of social media. A path between IKIN’s holograms and digital filters is easy to envision, given the current trajectory of both.

Looking Forward To More Fun With Digital Filters

The popularity and enjoyment of social media digital filters and digital backgrounds remain strong. But, it is technology’s nature to keep growing and refining. IKIN’s dimensional technology offers a glimpse into one potential branch of evolution for digital filters that could improve on the AR approach of face filters and offer new depth for digital backgrounds. We’ll have to wait to see how all this unfolds. Luckily, while we wait, we can pass the time transforming ourselves into animated Pixar characters that take our Zoom calls from inside the Oval Office, all digitally accomplished, of course.

To learn more about IKIN’s ongoing developments in holographic technology and hologram applications, please visit the IKIN Blog. And, remember to follow IKIN on social media.