Snapchat Filters - How to use Snapchat Filters

Snapchat filters have evolved. We now have geofilters and custom on-demand filters. No longer do we live in the traditional world. Take a look at how to use Snapchat filters and get all the filters you need.

In order to start using Snapchat filters, you need to go to your settings and activate the filters. You will find this in the Additional Settings page.


Everyone calls them Filters but Snapchat calls them lenses. They are very silly but the engineering behind them is serious. This technology came from a Ukrainian startup called Looksery which Snapchat acquired in September 2015 for a $150 million dollars. That’s the largest tech acquisition in Ukranian history so far. Their augmented reality filters tap into the large and rapidly growing field of “computer vision” those are applications that use pixel data from a camera in order to identify objects and interpret 3D space.


So how does a snapchat filter work? Well! The first step is detection. The computer decides which part of an image is a face. This is something that our brains are too good at. But for a computer, it needs to have the color value of each individual pixel. The computer finds the areas of contrast, between light and dark parts of the image. And this facial detection tool is called the Viola-Jones algorithm.

This algorithm works by repeatedly scanning through the image data thereby calculating the difference between data of the image. Once the algorithm finds enough matches in one area of the image, it concludes that there is a face there. However, it won’t find your face if you are facing sideways or tilted, but they are very accurate for frontal faces. So this is how a snapchat filter works.

How do I use Snapchat Filter

I am going to show you how to use filters on snapchat. You need to have your snapchat app open and I want you to flip the camera around by tapping on the camera icon on the top right corner. Hold your thumb down or finger down on your face and you can see that circles are going around there.

Before we go further, always remember to update your snapchat app because snapchat rolls out new artwork and new filters like almost every day. It’s one of the things I think is as impressive as there is always new stuff. All the artwork is top-notch. I think it’s the coolest artwork out there and it’s always fresh and new which makes it kind of fun because it seems like every time you turn on snapchat you got something new to play with and pressure to make people laugh. So that’s all these filters are meant to do is just kind of let your hair down, relax and have fun with. Here’s how you use snapchat filters.

The only thing you need to do is press on the screen. I usually just press right at my nose, look at your phone look at your nose, and just press the screen and it’s going to activate the little wire mesh. You’re going to see the white wire mesh go over the screen that means you have activated the filters. That’s it! Look below there’s a little circle in the middle, that’s the shutter button. Below the shutter button is the “X” button, if you want to “X” out of the filter you need to press the “X” button.

To reactivate, press your thumb on your face right over your nose and it’s going to activate the wire mesh. When you see the wire mesh they’re activated so once you hit the shutter button or you can press it once for a photo and you can hold it for 10 seconds for a video. Whatever one you use the filter is going to be applied to your face.


The filters are really easy, some of them will tell you to raise your eyebrows or open your mouth and that’s just going to activate the little thing as you record your snap. Just slide it over to see all the different things that you can do. It’s kind of fun right. So that is how you use filters on Snapchat.

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