| "The beauty filters make me look cute, but I'm cute as hell anyway." 
Sian Butcher / Laura Gallant / BuzzFeed Earlier this year, an app called Meitu, made by the Chinese technology company of the same name, was discovered by Americans and Europeans and went viral. Photo apps like Snapchat and Instagram reign supreme in the West, but outside this sphere, there's a whole universe of popular photo editing apps like Meitu that most English-speaking people haven't tapped into yet. And if the viral – albeit short-lived – success of Meitu is anything to go by, it's only a matter of time before similar apps from East Asia break into the Western market again. So it's probably time to get to know what's out there. We decided to test out three popular East Asian camera apps. 
We picked three apps to try, based on their popularity in East Asia, their growth in countries outside East Asia, and recommendations from current users. Snow is an app released in 2015 by Naver, a Korean company that also owns the popular messaging app Line. On Snow you can add filters and stickers to selfies, create stories, and send pictures to friends who also use the app. Snow boasts 100 million users worldwide, and is particularly popular in South Korea and Japan. BeautyPlus is another app created by the company behind Meitu. It allows users to edit selfies, as well as offering filter options. BeautyPlus is popular in Japan, and like other Meitu partner apps, its appeal is quickly growing outside Asia. Foodie is owned by Line Corporation, an offshoot of Naver. The app was originally created so people could take better photos of their food, but users have found that it's also pretty great for seflies. Each filter is named after the type of food or drink it best complements. Foodie is popular in South Korea and Taiwan, where it was the No. 1 app early last year. We asked BuzzFeed staff members to try out these three popular East Asian beauty apps and tell us whether they'd consider swapping their staple photo apps for these alternatives. Naver / Meitu / Line Corporation
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