Mirror, Mirror in the App: What’s the Fairest Shade and Shadow of Them All?
魔镜App，哪款妆容适合我？
As any lipstick shopper knows, deciding between tropical coral, peony pink and fairest nude is not a straightforward choice.
要买口红的顾客都知道，要在热带珊瑚色、粉红色及最浅的裸色之间做个选择，并不是件容易的事情。
And without being able to apply new colors, to pucker or smile in a shade unknown, it is quite easy to buy a fashion mistake.
如果无法试用新色口红，无法试着在涂上新色口红之后噘嘴或微笑，人们很容易犯下时尚错误。
Now, one beauty company has come up with a high-tech way to figure it out, and others are experimenting with bringing a virtual makeup counter to their customers. 如今，一家化妆品公司提出了解决这一问题的高科技办法，其他一些公司则在试验给顾客提供虚拟化妆台。
On Thursday, L’Oréal will introduce an app that turns the front-facing iPhone and iPad camera into a makeup mirror that allows customers to virtually try on more than 300 cosmetic products and see immediately different looks or complete makeovers on their own faces.
欧莱雅(L'Oréal)将于周四推出一款应用程序，将iPhone和iPad的前置摄像头变成化妆镜，顾客可以虚拟试用300多种化妆品，立即看到不同的妆容，或者在自己的脸上完成化妆。
They can pout, sneer, move in and out of changes in lighting or shadows, and the virtual makeup stays as if it had been painted on. (A recent test confirmed that the virtual makeup will move with expressions, although vigorous head-shaking seemed to dislodge some heavy eye shadow a bit.)
她们可以噘嘴、冷笑，改变亮度和阴影。虚拟妆容完成后可以一直保留，就像是画上去的一样。（最近的测试已确证虚拟妆容将随着表情改变，不过，猛烈地摇头好像会让浓重的眼影有所减褪。）
The app, called Makeup Genius, was developed in partnership with a company
known for its facial mapping in movies and video games. The firm, Image Metrics, received an Oscar for its work to digitally transform Brad Pitt’s 40-something face through all the stages of life, from baby to old man, in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”
欧莱雅与一家以电影及视频游戏面部绘图而闻名的公司合作开发了这款名为Makeup Genius的应用程序。该公司名为Image Metrics，曾在《返老还童》(The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)中利用数字转换技术展示了40多岁的布拉德·皮特(Brad Pitt)从婴儿到老人各个生命阶段的面容，由此获得奥斯卡奖。
The app is yet another manifestation of a race among businesses to be connected to the consumer on every device, a competition that has left cosmetic companies far back in the pack. But it also is a notable advancement toward the concept of an “interactive mirror” that has long fascinated some in the beauty and fashion industries.
各路商家竞相通过所有设备与消费者实现连接，这款应用是这场竞争的又一体现。在这场竞争中，化妆品公司被远远地甩在了后面。不过，这款应用也向“互动镜子”的概念迈出了引人注目的一步，长期以来，美容业和时尚行业的一些从业者一直对这个概念心驰神往。
“There is some good history on this one,” said James L. McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research, who wrote about the idea of a “magic mirror” and says he has been contacted by many health and beauty companies since then. Most efforts to date, he said, have not been truly successful.
弗雷斯特研究公司(Forrester Research)分析师詹姆斯·L·麦奎维(James L. McQuivey)说，“这个概念有一定的优良传统。”麦奎维曾撰文介绍“魔镜”的概念。他说，自那之后，许多保健公司和美容公司都找过他。他说，这方面的大多数努力迄今没有取得真正的成功。
Still, companies keep trying. The notion of being able to see what the dress or sunglasses or sandals you are about to order really would look like on you — not the willowy model shot at just the perfect angle with who knows how much retouching — seems to be the ultimate in consumer convenience and empowerment. It also holds the possibility of a substantial savings boon for all those companies shouldering expensive rapid shipping and returns costs.
尽管如此，各家公司仍在继续尝试。有一个概念似乎能让消费者的便利性和自主性达到极致，那就是让你看到打算订购的服饰、太阳镜或凉鞋上身的真实效果，而不是苗条模特穿用它们的照片。那些照片从完美的角度拍摄，天知道经过了几重修版。这个概念还有一个潜力，可望为所有承担着昂贵的速递和退货费用的公司带来节省花销的巨大福
利。
Warby Parker, the online glasses retailer, has a try-on function that lets consumers upload a picture of themselves to see what various frames look like on their faces. A competitor, glasses.com, which was recently purchased by the eyewear giant Luxottica, has an appthat creates a 3-D model of shoppers’ faces for virtual try-ons and lets them adjust the glasses on their faces by touching the screen. Cisco and others have developed virtual dressing room technology, though it has not been widely adopted.
网上眼镜零售商Warby Parker拥有试戴功能，允许消费者上传自己的照片，看看不同的镜框与面部搭配的效果。它的竞争对手、近期被眼镜业巨头Luxottica收购的glasses.com则推出了一款应用，能够创建买家的脸部三维模型以进行虚拟试戴，并能通过触摸屏幕来调整脸上的眼镜。思科(Cisco)等企业已开发出了虚拟试衣间技术，尽管尚未投入广泛应用。
There is also a growing genre of makeup (or makeover) apps, including Perfect 365, FaceTune and Visage Lab, that make it possible for people to touch up their photos, eliminating a pimple here, a wrinkle there, putting a flush in cheeks, even shaving off a pound or two — the better for posting on Instagram and elsewhere.
化妆（或美颜）类别的应用也在不断增长，其中包括Perfect 365、FaceTune和Visage Lab。这些应用能让人们修正照片，去除粉刺和皱纹，加上腮红，乃至减重一两磅——为的是上传到Instagram等地方的时候形象更美。
But the new L’Oréal app deals strictly in reality — how its products look on a potential customer’s untouched face — for better or worse. It also offers a chance to virtually try 16 “curated looks,” like “smoky eyes” devised by the celebrity makeup artist Billy B.
不过，欧莱雅的新应用严格遵照现实，也就是自家产品用在潜在消费者未经修饰的脸上的效果，无论好坏。它还提供虚拟尝试16种“定制妆容”的功能，比如“烟熏妆”，均由明星化妆师比利·比(Billy B)设计。
To accomplish the virtual mirror effect, the L’Oréal app had to be intuitive enough to discern between, say, the skin of lips, cheeks and other facial features. Developers said they tested lip, eye and cheek products on hundreds of people of numerous ethnicities in 400 different lighting conditions and conducted extensive studies, including how a product dries on the skin. The company would not say how much money it invested in the effort.
为了达到仿真化妆镜的效果，欧莱雅的应用必须强大到足以分辨诸如唇部皮肤和脸颊等面部特征的地步。开发人员称，他们在400种不同的光照条件下测试了唇部、眼部和腮
部产品，受试人群涵盖了许许多多族裔的数百人，并且开展了广泛的研究，包括某种产品如何在皮肤上逐步干燥。欧莱雅拒绝透露在这一应用上的投资金额。
“While we provided the facial mapping technology, working with L’Oréal to ensure what consumers ultimately see in the app — in terms of color, texture, opacity, shine and overall look — that was tremendous,” said Ron Ryder, the chief executive of Image Metrics.
“尽管我们以前也提供面部绘制技术，但与欧莱雅合作，保证消费者通过这款应用最终还原所见，包括色彩、质地、透明度、光泽和整体妆容，实在是了不起，”Image Metrics的首席执行官罗恩·赖德(Ron Ryder)说。
The app is the first major project to come out of a high-tech incubator that the beauty company opened a year and a half ago in a suburban office building in Clark, N.J., about 30 minutes outside New York City. There, a team of Ph.D.s, physicists, computer scientists and others is working to help the company develop a high-tech relationship with the consumer in a field that doesn’t naturally lend itself to connectivity.
该应用是欧莱雅一年半前创立的高科技孵化中心推出的首个重大项目。这个中心位于新泽西州克拉克郊区的一座办公楼里，距纽约市约30分钟路程。在那里，一群博士、物理学家和计算机科学家等研究者正在努力帮助公司与客户建立一种高科技的关系，而在公司所在的领域，人们原来并不重视这种连通性。
“The reason why we started it is we see the beauty consumer has changed in terms of what they actually want in a product and an experience,” said Guive Balooch, global director of the company’s Connected Beauty Incubator, who has a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering and came to L’Oréal from the pharmaceutical field. “We are moving more and more toward service, personalization, toward customization.” “我们之所以开始做这个，是因为我们看到，美妆消费者在产品与体验上的真实需求发生了转变，”欧莱雅联美孵化中心(Connected Beauty Incubator)的全球主管吉韦·巴洛什(Guive Balooch)说。他拥有生物医药工程方面的博士学位，来到欧莱雅之前在医药行业工作。“我们越来越多地转向服务、个性化，转向定制化。”