How to · 4 min read
An app that lets you touch the skin in a photo
Photos are something you look at. Soft Touch makes them something you can touch. Load a portrait, put a finger on the cheek, and the skin sinks, blanches, and slowly regains its colour when you let go — all inside your browser, without the picture ever leaving your device.
What actually happens when you press
The app does far more than warp pixels. It treats the pressed spot as a dent in a height field, estimates where the light in the photo is coming from, and re-lights the dent so the shading looks like it belongs in the picture.
It also drains the colour from the pressed area, the way real skin blanches when the capillaries are squeezed, and lets the colour refill over a second or two after you release. That small colour cue is what makes it read as living skin rather than rubber.
The forehead is hard, the cheek is soft
Before you touch anything, the app finds 478 points on the face and 33 on the body. Each region is assigned a tissue thickness: the forehead and the bridge of the nose sit right on bone and barely yield, while the cheeks, lips, belly and thighs sink deep.
Try pressing the forehead and then the cheek. The difference is immediate, and it is the main thing that makes the picture feel like a person rather than a surface.
Four touches and thirteen expressions
Press sinks the skin. Pull lifts a pinch of skin and stretches it. Pinch brings two fingers together and gathers the skin into a fold that stays pink for a moment. Stroke leaves a faint warm trail where your finger passed.
The face responds too: a press tends to move through ticklish, smile and bliss; a stroke through smile, dreamy and shy; a pull or pinch through surprise and a wince. There are thirteen expressions, with automatic blinking, and you can fix one in the settings if you prefer.
Try it with the sample, then your own image
The sample image on the home page is free with no sign-up and includes every feature. Once you sign up, your first own image is free; after that each image costs a few points, with no time limit and no expiry.
Nothing you load is uploaded. The rendering and the face and body detection all run in your browser, and the picture is gone the moment you close the tab.