Snap releases seven new templates and Giphy integration for its Lens Studio, and now lets creators build their own face filters for the first time
Snap releases seven new templates for Lens Studio, plus Giphy integration — Snap is expanding its developer platform to let creators build face filters …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the second expansion of Lens Studio in four months: Snap launched the Mac and Windows creation tool in December 2017, then in February began selling $10+ Custom Lenses built from 150 templates. What changes now is scope — face filters, until this release the preserve of Snap's own in-house lens team, open to outside creators for the first time.
The move also reverses course on Snap's earlier approach to paid selfie effects, which ran through a 99-cent lens store back in 2015. Instead of selling filters itself, Snap is building a supply side: templates plus Giphy content lower the skill floor so more people can produce lenses.
First-order effects
- Creators using Lens Studio can now build face filters directly, ending Snap's monopoly on the format its camera is best known for.
- Giphy's GIF and sticker library becomes raw material inside Snapchat lenses, giving creators ready-made assets instead of blank canvases.
Second-order effects
- Giphy gains a high-volume distribution channel into Snapchat's camera, deepening the integration ahead of its acquisition by Facebook.
- The template-plus-marketplace structure mirrors the $10+ Custom Lenses program, pushing Snap toward a two-tier system where casual users buy templated effects while creators produce them.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Lens Studio keeps absorbing more capability — the corpus shows it later gaining themed Lens Challenges and, by 2023, a ChatGPT Remote API in Lens Studio 5.0 — turning Snap's camera from a product feature into a third-party AR development platform.
- The shift from selling filters (the 2015 lens store) to subsidizing creation suggests Snap's lens economics are moving from per-item revenue to engagement-driven scale, with creators rather than Snap supplying the catalog.
The trend: Snap is steadily converting its camera from an in-house feature into an open AR creation platform, widening Lens Studio's toolset and audience with each release.