Go to the App Store on your smartphone and search for "Meitu." The first app that should show up has a pink icon with the Chinese character "xiu," which means "beautiful" or "elegant." This is Meitu. When you download Meitu and open then open the app on your phone, you'll see that the main page includes all of the photo editing options available, such as "Editing" and "Retouch." The latter has some astonishing options; for instance, you can make figures in the photo appear taller, get rid of acne, and even brighten dark circles (bye, bye, concealer!).

Swipe left and you'll continue to see more options, including "Hand-drawn," "Collage" (where you can combine photos to make a mosaic-like poster) and "Auto Beauty."

If you're looking to manually touch up a photo, the "Editing" option has a number of features that are relatively standard when it comes to photo editing, such as "auto," "brightness," "contrast," and "sharpen" (similar to what you can do on Instagram).

One of the most intriguing features of Meitu is "Hand-drawn," which lets you add colorful backgrounds and, yes, basically turns you into an anime character. Here's a breakdown of how exactly to use the "Hand-drawn" option to enhance your selfies:

Again, swipe left on Meitu's main page and click on "Hand-drawn." The first page you'll see will show an example of what you can do to your photos with "Hand-drawn" (plus, it'll boast about how many times this particular feature has been used by Meitu fans). Click the pink button that asks you to "Try now."

Before you can choose a picture for "Hand-drawn," Meitu is kind enough to provide some ideas for how to select the best selfie. For instance, your face should be directly in front of the camera, not on the side.

I will point out that Meitu seems to conform to very narrow standards of beauty. For instance, one of the tips suggests that you need to have long hair in order to make the photo editing app work. Honestly, who cares? Ultimately, pick the selfie that you like the most.

Before editing, you'll have to give permission for Meitu to access your photo album and camera. Once you've done that, you can either take a photo and upload it directly to Meitu or select an existing photo from the album on your phone.

Keep in mind that only photos that feature just one face is allowed (sadly, this means you can't edit group pictures).

Once you've uploaded a photo, you can now begin applying filters to make your selfie look "hand-drawn!" The photo work station is up top, while a carousel of seven filters are at the bottom. Filters range from "Angelic" to "Fairy Tale" to "Petals." My app in particular notes that "Blossoms" is the most popular filter at the moment, and that "New Year" is a new filter. I'm hoping this means that Meitu will rotate different "hand-drawn" filters through its photo editing system.

I chose the "Mermaid" filter for my selfie. As you can see above, the filter automatically applied blush to my cheeks, got rid of any blemishes or skin imperfections, and added a twinkle to my eyes (do they seem bigger than before, too?). Bubbles float in the background and foreground, giving a "watercolor-like" appearance.

The last thing to do in "Hand-drawn" is to decide if you want to share the photo with your friends on a variety of social media, such as Facebook, WeChat, or Instagram, or if you'd like to change the effect and use another filter (the one I'm using for this photo is the "Angelic" filter, in case you were wondering).

Granted, the final result doesn't look remotely anything like what I do in real life. But I guess nobody edits a photo to make it look realistic, right? If the "Hand-drawn" feature is a bit much, you can always go back to applying more subtle changes with the "Editing" option.

And there you have it! Now, you should have all the knowledge and tools you need to tweak all of your selfies like a pro using Meitu. Happy editing!