App of the week: Sticky AI review
Selfies? Pah! Today, it’s all about selfie stickers, don’t you know?
If your main grievance with social media stickers is you’re not in enough of them, Sticky AI is for you.
The app – made by the Prisma folks – enables you to shove your gurning visage (in sticker form) into whatever social media app you fancy, ensuring there is no escape for your friends and family, short of them smashing up their iPhones with a hammer.
Cardboard cut-out
Getting started is disarmingly simple. Snap a selfie, and Sticky AI instantly removes the background. In some cases, it does this worryingly well, like someone’s kidnapped a Photoshop expert and stuffed them into your phone.
Occasionally, the app fluffs it. I took a shot of me giving a thumbs up to camera, and Sticky AI helpfully removed the thumb. Fortunately, I was pulling a suitably pained expression at the time, and so that all worked out fine. More interestingly, the app removes objects covering your face, if you fancy intentionally making a selfie with the top of your head sliced clean off.
Shoot me
Once you’ve taken a dozen selfies and got the perfect one, Sticky AI gives you tools to mess around a bit more. You can use pinch and drag gestures to move and rotate your beautiful self, tap a button to add a border, adjust the background colour and photo effect, and then add some text (which can include emoji).
Unfortunately, there’s no edit button for fine-tuning Sticky AI’s masking, nor can you adjust the alignment of the text you add. These criticisms probably mark Stuff out as “sounding like my granddad”, and not understanding that Sticky AI is all about speed. And that’s fair enough; on that basis, it all works very well.
Get animated
The app also gives you an option to make animated loops. Hold the shutter rather than tapping it to fashion a terrifying GIF animation of yourself. Surprisingly, the cut-out bits still work well with animated fare, even when simulating a zoom effect and yelling “EXTREME CLOSE UP!” in a semi-ironic nod to Wayne’s World. (Reference immediately lost on anyone under 30.)
Happily, all these little slices of genius can be saved in the app, so you can go back and edit your favourites. This also means your creations are ready and waiting for re-use in Messages, or in Sticky AI itself, when you want to share them to WhatsApp, Snapchat, Skype, Facebook Messenger, Line, or possibly all of them in a flurry of social media madness.
Sticky AI is available for iOS, and is due out on Android later this month
Stuff Says…
A throwaway app, for sure, but one that’s a lot of fun unless you happen to be a misery guts
Good Stuff
Really easy to use
Surprisingly great masking
Easy to share and re-edit snaps
Can make animations too
Bad Stuff
No mask editing
Few text options
Craig Grannell
Contributor 
