Photo editing app paves global path

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‍Photo editing app Meitu burst into popularity at the start of this year. It can turn images of celebrities into "hand-drawn" cartoons, including then US President-elect Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Edited photos of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton /CGTN Photo

And of course, it helps beautify millions of people across the world by customizing their pictures.

Established in 2008, Meitu is a leading mobile Internet company located in Xiamen, the host city of this year’s BRICS Summit.

Installed on more than 1.1 billion devices and used by more than 480 million subscribers, Meitu's photo editing apps sit at the top of Apple's app store’s top 8 non-gaming applications in terms of downloads.

Besides for some changes done in a girly cartoon style – such as sparkling eyes and blush – Meitu’s short video app Meipai offers augmented reality effects.

Meitu incorporates augmented reality in its touch-up effects and filters. /CGTN Photo

In addition to its core features of turning photos into cartoon sketches, the app's wide array of editing tools and filters also helped it spread on social media platforms globally.

"We started our globalization effort back in 2016. As of today, we have more than 500 million subscribers worldwide outside of China. And we have operations in more than 10 countries, especially in Brazil, India, Southeast Asia, Japan, the United States, and Europe," said Frank Fu, Managing Director of Meitu’s Global Operations.

Frank Fu, Managing Director of Meitu’s Global Operations speaks with CGTN. /CGTN Photo

"For example, in India, there a lot of male users in addition to female users. Believe it or not, there are probably 50 percent male users in India," Frank Fu told CGTN.

Even though there are regional differences on beauty preferences, the photo editing app, jokingly called the online version of plastic surgery, has played into people’s universal pursuit of better looks.

Laura Oliveira was born and raised in Brazil, and her favorite feature among all the options is to darken her skin.

"I like to change the color of the skin. Because you know in Brazil and many Latin American countries, we like the darker skin. So it's just the opposite as the Chinese. But the darker skin in this app is not dark enough for me," Laura told CGTN.

Brazilian expat Laura Oliveira uses Meitu to darken her skin. /CGTN Photo

"I know that Chinese people use it to enlarge their eyes and change the color of the skin. I don't use it to do that, but I'm using it to find the better light for my photos," said another Brazilian expat Rafael Fontana.

With state-of-the-art technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, Meitu localizes its products and cooperates with global tech giants such as Facebook in augmented reality. Now millions of smartphone users are one step closer to finding their ideal look.