How to share a look with a recipe code

Why a code and not a preset file?

Presets in most editors are files you download, import and manage. A code fits in a caption, a message, a screenshot or a spoken sentence. It can be typed from a photo of someone else’s screen. That is the whole reason: a look should travel the way people already talk, not through a file system.

Codes are also honest about what they carry. A file could contain anything. A Sfuma code contains a fixed list of settings and nothing else, so there is nothing to worry about when you paste a code from a stranger.

How do you make a code?

1. Edit a photo the way you like: Touch Up, a Look with its Intensity, light and color in Edit.
2. Tap Share look in the editor or on the Export screen.
3. Give the look a name if you want. Copy the code, or share it as a link. You can include the photo as a separate image; it is never inside the code.
4. Tap Keep in Mine and the look sits first in the Looks grid, ready for your next photo.

Creating and sharing your own looks is part of the unlock. Pasting a code is free for everyone, always.

How do you paste a code?

1. Copy the code from wherever you found it.
2. Open Sfuma. On the Home screen, paste it into “Paste a look code…”, or tap that field with a code on your clipboard and Sfuma offers to apply it.
3. Pick a photo. The look is applied, scaled to the face in it. Hold the photo to compare with the original, adjust anything you like, export.

If someone sent a link instead, opening it does the same thing. If Sfuma is installed, the link opens the app directly.

What travels inside a code?

• Face shape amounts, including Slimming → Nose, applied in proportion to each face.
• Skin: Soften and Even tone.
• Detail: Teeth whitening and Eye brighten.
• Light and color: Brightness, Contrast, Warmth, Saturation, Fade.
• The Look and its Intensity.

What never travels

• The photo. A code has no pixels in it.
• The crop. It belongs to one photo.
• Heal spots. They belong to one face.
• Under-eye. It is tuned to one face.
• Body edits, Chin included. A look is a style; a body edit is personal, and a code that reshaped bodies would be a bad thing to pass around.

Proof: the recipe format defines exactly these fields; body and heal edits are excluded by design, and a test checks that every part of a code decodes back to the same values.

Why does the code look the way it does?

Codes use digits and letters from a set with no I, L, O or U, so a 1 is never mistaken for an I and a 0 is never an O. That is why a code typed from a screenshot comes out right. Every code carries a format version, so later versions of Sfuma can keep reading it.

What if a code does not load?

Sfuma says “That code doesn’t look right” instead of applying something wrong. Check the code against the source: every code is SF- followed by groups of four characters; the last group can be shorter, and edits with more settings make longer codes. If it came from a screenshot, retype it rather than copying from an image-to-text tool, which often inserts the letters the format excludes. If the sender has the app, ask for the link; a link cannot be mistyped.

Links and privacy

A shared link looks like sfuma.cam/r/#SF-2400-CCW0. The part after “#” is never sent to a server; your browser keeps it and the page decodes it locally. Our server only ever learns that a recipe page was opened, not which look it was.

Creators

A creator look is simply the code the creator’s own edit produced, like SF-24JG-CG7T-3C; nobody can pick a code’s letters, because they come from the settings. If you make looks people ask for, read how we work with creators.