Why do I look better in pictures than in the mirror?

Ok so I feel like I look better in pictures on my iphone Front camera than in the mirror or if I take a picture outside and on the pictures I look nothing like how I looked in the mirror. If that makes any sense, but I feel like I look different and better in pictures hows that possible? Which one is more accurate? I been feeling so ugly lately cuz i don't know if I look how I look in the mirror or my iphone front camera pictures. Ppl have told me I was pretty but i don't know which they see? It really depresses me, I don't know how I even lookk. Please answer, thanks in advance!

Totally weird! I'm the opposite! I look horrible in iphone pictures, yet great in the mirror. I think that it's just a perception issue. Even if they saw the "bad" looking you, they still told you that you were pretty, so you're fine! I would say either could be distorting, especially an old mirror. Try showing other people the iphone pictures and then you in the mirror and ask them if they think you look different/better/worse and which situation is better/worse. I wouldn't worry about it though!

For the same reason you can draw a good picture of a face but not a good picture of your friend's face. The view you see of yourself in the mirror is well know to you. It has to be pat so you're critical. The view you see of yourself in a picture is less know to you. You allow for variance so are less critical.

P.S. You look like the view in the pic to everyone else. And change your criteria on beauty: Your eyes are the perfect shape. If they're square, everyone else's eyes are too round.

A mirror image reverses left and right due to the way the rays bounce from your face to the mirror and back. This takes some optic ray tracing to understand

we never see in a mirror what others see straight on cameras have a double reverse to make the image