Just spent a few minutes playing around with online makeover website Taaz, and it didn’t take long to figure out that it is hands down the best makeover software I’ve ever tried.  Uploading and preparing your photo is an extremely polished process, after which a user can then virtually apply any makeup you’d use in real life – foundation, concealer, blush, lipstick, eyeshadow and liner, hell, even eye color and fake eyelash styles.  There are hundreds of colors to choose from, each with an upscale brand recommendation of how to create the look skinside.  There are about 50 hairstyles included as well that look surprisingly realistic and are easy to adjust to the shape of your face, but the styles themselves I thought could use a bit of updating.  Below is a screenshot of before and after playing with the service for about 15 minutes (click the picture to see full size). 

    
My verdict?  Taaz is absolutely fabulous.  It’s a lot smarter and more powerful than pay software I’ve demoed, the product suggestion feature is genius (as long as it actually does generate similar results), and everything girl and geek in me thinks Taaz is just plain fun to use.

Oh wait, there’s more…I knew there was a reason why this was linked on TechCrunch – it’s a social network, too!  Users can save their makeovers to the public gallery to be voted / commented on, or if you’re brave, edited if your friends think they can do a better job (freebie:  it was really, really easy to give myself a mullet).  Or you can save right to you computer to reuse on the web as you please, and nobody would be the wiser.

Regardless of use for fun or fiction, Taaz is a beautifully executed service that I expect will send my productivity plummeting into the toilet.

PS:  They’re based in San Diego, which makes me double happy.