Digital Anarchy (http://www.digitalanarchy.com) has returned to the
film/video market with a skin smoothing and blemish removal plug-in
for After Effects and Final Cut Pro. The Beauty Box 1.0 provides
editors and visual effects artists working with film and video way of
smoothing out skin and removing blemishes.
“This is a problem we’ve wanted to solve for a long time,” says Jim
Tierney, president of Digital Anarchy. “There are so many cases where
the on-camera talent doesn’t have enough makeup on or you’re trying
to make a 45 year old rockstar look 25. Especially now that HD is so
common, seeing skin flaws has become a big problem. Beauty Box
provides a great solution that, in many cases, requires little or no
masking on the part of the editor or artist.”
Beauty Box uses face detection to automatically identify skin tones
and create a mask that limits the smoothing effect to just the skin
areas. This process usually requires little or no input from the user
and doesn’t involve hand masking. Just apply the filter, click
auto-detect, set the amount of smoothing, and render. This is
designed to speed up the workflow that is usually required for skin
retouchin, Tiernery says. Effects artists and editors no longer have
to manually create masks and retouch frame by frame.
The skin smoothing itself is also new technology. It keeps the
important features of the face sharp while reducing or eliminating
wrinkles and blemishes, Tierney says. By incorporating
state-of-the-art face detection and smoothing algorithms, Beauty Box
is designed to give actors a makeover in post-production.
Beauty Box is regularly priced at US$199, and will be available for
an introductory discount of $139 through Thursday, Jan. 7, 2010. The
filter works in After Effects 7.0-CS4, Final Cut Pro 6.0 -7.0, and
Premiere Pro CS4. On the Mac, the product runs on Mac OS 10.4 and
higher.