Free app puts your face on the cover of magazines

If you’ve ever wanted to sing about being on the cover of Rolling Stone – like the ‘ol Dr. Hook ditty from 1973 – all you need is an app.

Called Faker$, this free app for iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, lets you post your photos and tweak the text so that it looks like you were featured on the cover of famous magazines or newspapers.

Yes, it’s similar to those attractions at fairs and carnivals, where you can create fake magazine covers – but it’s a blast to do it yourself on your own device. Plus, you have a lot more options when it comes to designing and sharing your handiwork.

Faker$ has you first choose what kind of phony publication you want to create. In the magazine category, for example, you’ve got parodies of National Geographic, People, Vanity Fair, Golf and Rolling Stone, to name a few. The logo, font and layout of each magazine is nearly identical to the real one but look closer and you’ll see the name is spelled incorrectly – such as Vague instead of Vogue, Playtoy instead of Playboy or Uz instead of Us – but keep in mind you CAN change the words back to the real deal once you start your creation.

Once you select one of the unlocked covers, you can import a photo from your iOS device (iPad is recommended for the larger screen size). Then, position it on the cover of the magazine and begin to edit the text of the publication name, along with headlines and captions. I used a photo of my wife for the cover of Helio! (Hello!) and wrote: “Exclusive: Kellie Saltzman dishes all!”

Once you’ve finished with your faux magazine cover you can save it, email it or post it to social networks like Facebook or Twitter. It really does look authentic at first glance, which is part of the fun.

While only a handful of templates are free to start, in-app purchases unlock additional content, such as 15 different newspaper covers for $0.99 cents or 50 magazine covers for $2.99. A Faker$ Cinema Pack is also available, giving you a few dozen movie posters you can customize, such as “Leave Actually” (“Love Actually”) and “Jurassic Cat” (“Jurassic Park”).

If you don’t want to pay for access to more magazine covers and other content, you’ll get some for free by sharing your creations with 20 people.

Faker$ is available in six languages.