Question: I’m trying to smooth out a lady’s facial skin. I’ve played with the levels, tried layering a blurred clip on top with different blending modes, but so far it’s not working. What’s weird is, she looked GREAT in person while we were shooting, but the camera picked up a whole lot of wrinkles and pores. I saw a tutorial website charging $129 for a 6 month membership to learn a quick technique and thought that was crazy. Do you have a workaround?

Answer: There certainly is. As production enters the HD era, and cameras capture every detail, this simple technique can keep your client looking their best. Here’s how we did it in Final Cut Pro:

• Track 1 Video (make sure to color correct with 3-way first since you’ll be copying)
• Track 2 (actually about track 1, obviously) Copied video, overlay mode Screen, with Gaussian Blur (radius all the way up to 68), and set the clip’s opacity to suit, mine is at 70%. That gives you a soft glow for the highs/mids.
• Copy this clip and put on track 3 and do overlay composite mode if you want to put a soft glow on the darker regions.

Here is a video tutorial showing the above method in action.

If your budget allows - here are some plugins you can purchase

Beauty Box - $199

Uses Face Detection to automatically identify skin tones and create a mask that limits the smoothing effect to just the skin areas. Just apply the filter, click auto-detect, set the amount of smoothing, and render. This automatic process is designed to speed up the workflow that is usually required for skin retouching. Read how it works.

The Skin Smoothing is also a new technology. It keeps the important features of the face sharp while reducing or eliminating wrinkles and blemishes. By incorporating state-of-the-art face detection and smoothing algorithms, Beauty Box is designed to give actors a makeover in post-production.

The Electronic Makeup Artist - $149

This filter allows the user to select skin tones and apply smoothing to reduce wrinkles, blemishes, etc. Using various detection algorithms, enough detail can be retained to avoid a ‘blurry’, vaseline lens look. Download free demo.

Continuum Image Restoration $99

The Boris Continuum Image Restoration Unit includes the Smooth Tone, Pixel Fixer, and DV Fixer filters from Boris Continuum Complete 6.

The Digital Coverup plugin- $79

Sort of “Electronic Clearasil” - it’s used for fixing blemishes.

Digital Coverup can be used for changing the color of and/or smoothing anything you can isolate. It’s been successfully used to change eye color, tone down the highlight on a bald spot, and change the color of a blanket from pink to blue. Need to make your grass greener? Download a free demo.

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