Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover

Copyright: KBkids.com

Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover allows your and your teens to experiment with new hairstyles, colors and makeup applications. While not as humorous, and with a few more computer problems than Wig Out, this is a more substantial program with more real life applications. You will need access to a digital photograph of the person to be made over, or a scanner so that you can create your own digitized photo. If you do not have access to the equipment to do this, the program will not be of much use to you. Remember, most regular film can be processed as digital photos, but the cost is a bit higher.

Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover contains saved files of six models. There are five female (various races) and one Caucasian male model. You will notice that each of these models has his or her hair pulled back tightly, and is looking straight into the camera. It is difficult to find a photo laying around which will work well for this program, although not impossible. You will most likely need to take a photo specifically for this program application. Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover walks you through making sure the photo is just right so that hair styles look good. Although it is interesting to play with the included models, the real fun in the program is making over yourself or your friends. Without this capability, the program's replay value is rather limited.

Once you have a photo ready, you can choose to apply makeup, or change hairstyles or colors. There are far more options here than in Wig Out (a similar program). Short, medium, long, creative, glamorous and male hairstyles are included. Hairstyles here are also much more realistic and desirable than Wig Out. There are approximately a dozen styles in each category, sometimes more. The styles fit the photos fairly well and can be fine tuned so the picture looks fairly natural. The better your photograph, the better the program will work. There are no children's hairstyle included. Hair color can be adjusted and highlights added. This is a fun way to see what you would look like with a daring new style. Men and teens especially are often afraid to try something daringly different.

Makeup application is a little bit awkward. Tips are included which help you and your teen learn how to apply makeup, and how to select the right colors. There is not enough information on color selection based on your personal skin type etc., but the information was still valuable. You can apply foundation, blush, eye shadows, lipstick and beauty marks. It is also possible to pluck or line your eyebrows, but testers found no mascara application, which seemed a bit odd. The makeup application is not always easy, and there is no small eraser available. You must start over on that portion of the makeup if you make a mistake...which happens all too often. Testers also found load times a bit sluggish, even on a system which surpassed the minimum requirements substantially. This program, therefore, will run very slowly on a system meeting only the minimum requirements. There were also numerous times when the program froze up and had to be turned off while switching between various makeup styles. While you could zoom in on eyebrow applications, you could not do so when applying eye shadow. This makes for sloppy application.

If you or your teens would really like to try a new hairstyle, or just fool around with your own looks, this program has some definite value. While there are some salons that can do the same thing, they tend to be very high priced. If you have a digital camera, a group of teenage girls would also have a lot of fun with this program at a sleep over or large party. Other than that, the value of the program is rather limited.

Bottom Line: A full makeover program with nice (realistic!) hairstyles, but not a lot of replay value and rather sluggish.

Ratings: (based on KBkids.com's 4 star rating system)

Overall: 2

BrainGain: 1

FunFactor: 2

EasePlease: 2

Buy the latest upgrade, Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover Deluxe 3.0 at Amazon!