There's a psychological reason for that. You're used to seeing yourself in the mirror, so a photo of yourself looks subtly wrong. Reverse a photo of yourself and you immediately look better, but only to you. It's wrong to everyone else that way.
Yup! Been telling people this for years. Similarly, you hate your own voice in recordings because you're used to how there are bassy undertones that bounce in your head and get added on top of your voice. You can amplify your hearing of the bassier/muffled voice by just covering your ears and speaking.
Which means the trick for making your voice sound better in recordings is to just give it a touch of low end.
That's definitely part of it! Additionally though, how we feel about someone or something has a significant affect on how we perceive it. Imperfections we may focus on with ourselves (everyone's their own worst critic) or strangers will be lessened or completely overlooked when viewing things we care for.
Seeing people's perfectly curated family albums is always weird to me. Like, you're not going to capture all the weird, funny, ugly, gross, and human moments either? What's the point then? Lol.
For real, most of the pictures I have of my girlfriend are gorgeous, but she thinks they're hideous. I wish I could accurately convey to her how beautiful I think she is.
