Airbrush: Face & Photo Editor

Review by eFreeware

If you take a lot of selfies and want them to look better without spending an evening in a desktop editor, Airbrush is the sort of app worth a place on your phone. It comes from Pixocial Technology, it is free to install, and it has attracted a very large audience: over 100 million installs and a 4.1 average from roughly 1.58 million ratings. That combination tells you two things at once, that the app is widely used and that its users are not unanimously delighted.

What it offers is a set of retouching tools grouped around the face, the body, the background and, more recently, video. The developer's pitch is that the results should still look like you, just tidier, rather than like a different person. That is a reasonable ambition for this category, and it is the right frame for judging whether the app is likely to fit how you edit.

I would expect it to appeal most to people who post portraits and short clips regularly and want a repeatable routine: clean up skin, brighten teeth, adjust the background, apply a look, export. If you already work in a full editing suite and want fine manual control over curves, layers and masks, the emphasis here on automatic, one-tap adjustments will feel like a compromise rather than a shortcut.

The AI retouch tools that lead the app

The feature the developer puts first is AI Retouch, which is described as refining a portrait automatically and handling the detail work for you. In practice, that means the app decides where to smooth, where to sharpen and how far to push each adjustment, and you accept or adjust the result. It is the fastest route from a raw shot to something presentable, and it is also the part of the app where your taste matters least.

Around that sit the specific corrections most people reach for. Teeth whitening brightens a smile; blemish removal is there to take out acne and other spots; the smoothing tool softens wrinkles and evens out skin tone. A highlighter adds texture and glow to the features you want noticed. Each of these is a targeted fix rather than a global filter, which is why the app suits quick touch-ups on a single portrait.

The reshaping side is where the app becomes more opinionated. Reshape lets you adjust face and body proportions, and contouring changes the way facial structure reads in the photo. Red-eye, under-eye shadows and eye color can all be adjusted. None of these are unusual in a selfie editor, but they are the tools that most easily tip a photo from retouched into altered, so restraint is worth practicing.

Virtual makeup and hairstyling round out the portrait set. Makeup is applied with the same automatic approach, and the hairstyling features let you try different colors and styles, from highlights to softer waves. Trying a hair color before committing to it is one of the more defensible uses of this kind of tool, and it costs nothing but a photo.

Backgrounds, objects and repair

Beyond the face, the app handles the parts of a photo that are usually the most tedious to fix. Background editing can blur, replace or enhance what is behind you, which is useful when the setting is distracting but the subject is fine. The AI eraser removes unwanted objects, and the AI enhancer adjusts brightness, saturation and temperature on its own.

Filters and artistic effects are included for people who want a look rather than a correction, and AI Repair is aimed at low-quality images, restoring detail that has been lost. That last tool is the one I would treat with the most skepticism, because recovering information from a poor source image is inherently limited, but as a way to make an old or compressed photo presentable it is a sensible addition.

There are also three features that sit closer to creative play than editing. Pro Headshots generates studio-style portraits, Mood Swapper changes expressions, and Style Explorer shows you in different artistic styles. These are the tools most likely to produce something you would share as a novelty rather than use as a profile picture, and they are a fair reflection of how the app balances utility with entertainment.

Video editing in the same app

Video is treated as a first-class part of Airbrush rather than an afterthought. Face retouch can be applied to video, object removal works on clips as well as stills, and there is a quality enhancement pass for clarity. For anyone who records short selfie videos, having the same retouching vocabulary available in motion saves switching between two apps.

The trade-off is that video retouching is harder to get right than photo retouching, because an adjustment that looks good on a single frame has to hold up across movement. The developer describes the video tools as real-time. I would expect the photo side to remain the more precise of the two.

What the app asks of you

Airbrush is free to download and supported by ads, and it offers in-app purchases. The developer also describes a premium layer that includes more than 300 presets and makeup looks, over 400 filters and effects, unlimited access to the stylized tools, and more than 100 features and retouch options reserved for paying users. So the free experience is real, but a meaningful part of the catalog sits behind a purchase.

If you only need occasional skin smoothing and a filter, the free tier is likely to cover you. If the hairstyling, makeup and stylized tools are what drew you in, expect to pay for the fuller set.

The other thing the app asks is a tolerance for automatic decisions. Every headline feature here is built around the app making the first pass for you. That is the point of it, and it is also the limit of it. If you like to place every adjustment yourself, you will spend your time fighting the defaults rather than benefiting from them.

Getting good results without overdoing it

The most reliable way to use an app like this is to work in small steps and stop early. Start with the automatic retouch, then add only the specific corrections the photo actually needs: teeth, a blemish, under-eye shadows. Each additional tool compounds, and the difference between a good portrait and an obviously edited one is usually one adjustment too many.

Background work is best judged at full size rather than on a thumbnail, because blur and replacement effects are most visible at the edges of hair and shoulders. Similarly, reshaping and contouring are easier to keep believable if you compare against the original before exporting. The app gives you the tools; deciding when to stop is your job.

For video, I would keep expectations aligned with what the format allows. Real-time retouching is convenient, but a light touch will hold up better across a moving clip than an aggressive one. The recent update was limited to minor bug fixes and small improvements, so nothing about the workflow has changed recently.

The app has been around since October 2015 and was last updated in October 2026, which suggests a long-running product rather than a new experiment.

A capable everyday retoucher with a paid ceiling

Airbrush is a well-rounded selfie and video editor that leans hard on automatic retouching, and for a lot of people that is exactly the right approach. The portrait tools cover the usual ground competently, the background and object removal features add genuine utility, and the video side means you do not need a second app for short clips. The 4.1 average across such a large number of ratings suggests broad satisfaction with some room for disagreement.

The caveats are straightforward. It is ad-supported, it sells in-app purchases, and a substantial set of presets, filters and stylized tools is reserved for paying users. The whole design philosophy favors one-tap results over manual control, which will frustrate anyone who wants to adjust every parameter themselves.

If your editing needs run to precise, layer-by-layer work, the automatic approach here will feel like a constraint. For everyone else, it is a free way to find out how much retouching you actually want.

What's new in version 8.17.0

We've done some minor bug fixes and light upgrades to make your Airbrush experience even better. Happy creating!