For Windows 10 (1809+) / 11 · v3.0.0

Retouch every face. Touch nothing else.

VanityFilter is a Windows desktop app that smooths skin in recorded video. Open a clip, adjust the smoothing, and export the result. Processing runs offline on your PC, and the mask stops where skin stops, so the mask keeps treatment away from the eyes, lips and hair. It is a one-time purchase with no subscription.

One-time licenseFully offline1 user · 2 machines

Extreme close-up of a podcaster at the mic before smoothing, with visible pores and uneven skin texture
The same close-up after VanityFilter: skin smoothed and brightened, while her eyes, lips, and hair stay exactly as shot
Before After

Custom : Strength 0.85 · Texture repair 0.45 · Brighten 0.20 · 78% texture reduction inside the mask

VanityFilter

Blemish removal in VanityFilter 3.0

Watch three real creator treatments in VanityFilter 3.0, with the exact settings shown beside moving before-and-after comparisons. See how Blemish Removal repairs spots before smoothing runs, and which supporting controls each face actually needs.

Play the deep dive

Blemish removal in VanityFilter 3.0

See it work

Compare skin, up close

Two same-frame comparisons, each with manually tuned treatments. Drag the divider and open the larger view.

Studio frame, two people

Two faces in one studio frame, each masked on its own.

Studio frame of two people before processing
Studio frame of two people after processing
Before After

Restrained smoothing with detail preservation, small texture repair, shine and redness adjustments.

Settings

Strength .55 · Detail .65 · Repair .12 · Shine .15 · Redness .10 · Amount .80

Broadcast close-up

One face, tight crop, where skin texture is easiest to judge.

Broadcast close-up of a face before processing
Broadcast close-up of a face after processing
Before After

Restrained smoothing with detail preservation, small texture repair, shine and redness adjustments.

Settings

Strength .55 · Detail .65 · Repair .12 · Shine .15 · Redness .10 · Amount .80

Still-frame demonstrations processed with VanityFilter, not moving-video tests.

Studio frame, two people

Studio frame of two people before processing
Studio frame of two people after processing
Before After

Restrained smoothing with detail preservation, small texture repair, shine and redness adjustments.

Settings

Strength .55 · Detail .65 · Repair .12 · Shine .15 · Redness .10 · Amount .80

Broadcast close-up

Broadcast close-up of a face before processing
Broadcast close-up of a face after processing
Before After

Restrained smoothing with detail preservation, small texture repair, shine and redness adjustments.

Settings

Strength .55 · Detail .65 · Repair .12 · Shine .15 · Redness .10 · Amount .80

Precision masking

The mask stops where skin stops.

The mask is the product. Per-person segmentation keeps the treatment on skin while eyes, brows, lips, hair, caps, collars, clothing, and the background remain outside it. Each detected face gets its own sampled skin color and protected feature zones.

EyesBrowsLipsHair Hats & beaniesSunglassesJewelry Shirt graphicsBackground
Check before you commit

See exactly what the mask is doing.

An editor who has been burned by a beauty filter wants proof, not promises. Mask view renders the computed mask directly on the frame, so its boundary is right there on screen. Switch among Mask, Processed, Original, and Split on any sampled frame before you export. Tap any panel for the full-size view, or read the full interface tour.

Enlarge VanityFilter 2.0 Original view: the unprocessed podcast frame with the Adjust panel open
OriginalThe source frame, untouched, so you always have a reference to compare against.
Enlarge VanityFilter 2.0 Mask view: a green overlay covers only the skin, with the face, forehead, and neck regions outlined and eyes and lips protected
MaskThe exact skin mask, painted green, hugging skin and skipping eyes, lips, hair, and headphones.
Enlarge VanityFilter 2.0 Processed view: the finished smoothed frame with the Export panel open
ProcessedThe finished result on its own, the smoothed frame exactly as it will export.
Enlarge VanityFilter 2.0 Split view: the original frame on the left and the smoothed result on the right
SplitOriginal and processed, split down the middle, for a clean before-and-after read.
How it works

Four steps from raw to retouched.

Open

Drop in one clip or a whole batch. MP4, MOV, AVI, and MKV.

Preview

Frames are sampled across the timeline, with a live face count on each.

Tune

Five presets and sixteen sliders, re-rendered live, with four saved user slots.

Export

The preview pipeline is the export pipeline: what you saw is what you get.

Why creators run it

Look like yourself. On a good day.

What you get is footage where skin looks smoother and the person still looks like the person. VanityFilter corrects skin inside a per-person mask instead of blurring a face-shaped rectangle, so eyes, hair, clothing, and the set remain intact.

Close-up of a podcaster laughing at a mic before smoothing, with freckles and visible skin texture
The same podcaster after VanityFilter: skin naturally smoothed, freckles softened, hair and headphones untouched
Before After

46% of skin texture removed inside the mask: the headphones, hair, and the plant behind her left exactly as shot.

Polish the final cut

Drop the finished export in, pick a preset, upload the result. The fastest path: no plugins or timeline surgery, with audio included in the export. Most videos need nothing more.

Prep clips for the edit

Smooth footage before it hits the timeline. Export ProRes 422 HQ for grading, or add the grayscale mask matte and keep full creative control inside Premiere Pro or Resolve.

Automate the backlog

The included command-line tool batches whole folders with the exact settings from your preview. Point it at a season of episodes before bed; wake up to a retouched catalog.

Five built-in presets cover most footage. Sixteen sliders handle the treatment and mask when a shot needs more, every change re-renders live, and four user slots keep repeatable looks ready for the next batch.

VanityFilter 3.0

New in v3.0: more selective blemish repair, improved redness reduction and optional eyelid protection.

See the controls in action

Watch the controls and the natural skin-smoothing result across matched original and processed frames.

Explore every feature → See it work

Natural Skin Smoothing for News & Interview Videos 1:52

Natural Skin Smoothing for News & Interview Videos

Workflow

VanityFilter + Adobe Premiere Pro

Retouch the footage first, then edit clean plates. No masks to draw, no trackers to babysit, and zero beauty effect rendering on your timeline.

Where the work happens
VanityFilter (Windows)
Premiere Pro
Your camera / delivery
  1. Shoot & offload

    Card to drive as usual. Keep the untouched camera files as your originals.

    /footage/raw
  2. Drop clips into VanityFilter

    One clip or a whole folder. It finds every face in frame (up to five, profiles included) and builds a per-person skin mask.

    No masking · no tracking
  3. Dial it in once

    Set Strength, Texture repair, Detail restore, Shine removal and Redness on one clip, then reuse across the batch.

    Strength 0.69 Texture 0.71 Detail 0.21
  4. Export clean plates

    The retouch is baked into the source. ProRes for grading, H.264 for fast turnarounds.

    /footage/smoothed
    Optional

    Or export a mask matte

    Export the grayscale mask plus a settings sidecar and use it as a Track Matte in Premiere: VanityFilter does the per-person masking, you keep final say on the composite and grade.

  5. Import & edit in Premiere

    Cut, grade and export normally. Playback stays snappy because there is no beauty effect on the timeline.

    Zero per-clip render

Why not do it on the timeline?

Blur + tracked mask

Free, but one mask and one track per shot... and trackers drift on profiles.

Beauty plugin

Automated, but a subscription... and it renders per clip on your timeline.

Pre-edit with VanityFilter

Auto, batchable, up to 5 faces, nothing rendering on the timeline.

Under the hood

Three neural networks and a retoucher’s playbook.

VanityFilter isn’t a blur filter with good marketing. It runs a computer-vision pipeline on every frame (the kind of stack that used to need a cloud service) entirely on your machine. Here’s the proof at point-blank range: an extreme close-up, one dialed-up pass. Watch what moves, and what doesn’t.

Extreme close-up of a podcaster before smoothing: visible pores, freckles, and fine lines
The same close-up after VanityFilter: skin smoothed and gently brightened, the skin mask excludes eyes, brows, lips and hair from treatment
Before After

Custom : Strength 0.80 · Texture repair 0.30 · Brighten 0.15 · 38% of the frame masked as skin · 71% texture reduction

The segmentation mask found the skin; the exclusion zones carved out her eyes, brows and lips. These regions are excluded from treatment; video encoding can still change their pixels.

It sees every face

A 478-point face mesh maps each person’s features, up to five per frame. A second, independent detector catches turned and profile heads that mesh trackers lose, so smoothing doesn’t pop in and out when someone looks at their co-host mid-sentence.

It knows what skin is

A person-segmentation network classifies every pixel (skin, hair, clothing, background) so each mask follows the real jawline, hairline, and neckline instead of guessing with boxes. Eyes, brows, and lips are carved out as protected zones, and masks are stabilized across frames so they never flicker.

It retouches like a pro

The smoothing engine pairs edge-preserving filtering with frequency separation (the technique behind magazine retouching) to clear blotches and compression noise at one frequency while Detail Restore re-adds genuine pore-level texture at another. Brightening runs in LAB color, lifting only the lightness channel with a gamma curve, so skin gains a glow while its hue stays exactly as shot. That’s why skin stays skin instead of turning to wax.

It renders what you previewed

The preview and the export run the identical pipeline (same masks, same math) so there are no surprises after a long render. H.264 encodes on your NVIDIA GPU when you have one; ProRes 422 HQ and untouched original audio come standard.

Specs

Runs on the machine you already have.

VanityFilter is a fully self-contained desktop app: every AI model, codec, and dependency ships inside the installer. No Python, no plugin frameworks, no codec packs, no account. It installs on a clean Windows 10 (version 1809 or later) or Windows 11 machine and just runs, completely offline. An NVIDIA GPU can accelerate H.264 encoding, but AMD and Intel systems are fully supported on the CPU path. If your camera writes MP4, MOV, AVI, or MKV, it’s welcome here: phones, mirrorless, action cams, and screen recorders included.

OS
Windows 10 (1809+) / 11 (64-bit)
GPU
Optional (NVIDIA H.264 hardware encoding)
Input
MP4 · MOV · AVI · MKV
Output
H.264 MP4 · ProRes 422 HQ MOV
Faces per frame
Up to 5, profiles included
Audio
Preserved from the source
Disk
~800 MB, everything bundled
Dependencies
None (models and codecs included)
Internet
Not required (fully offline)
License
Offline key · 1 user · 2 machines
FAQ

Questions, answered plainly.

Is my footage uploaded anywhere?

No. Processing runs entirely on your machine, and the license check is offline too. Your video never leaves your computer.

Do I need an NVIDIA card?

No. VanityFilter runs on any modern 64-bit PC. If you have an NVIDIA GPU, H.264 encoding can use it. Export time also depends on the footage and processing settings.

How many people can it handle?

Up to five faces per frame, each with its own independent mask, including heads turned to profile, which most face tools lose.

Can I use the mask in Premiere or Resolve?

Yes. Enable mask export and you get a grayscale matte video ready to use as a track matte, plus a JSON sidecar recording the exact settings of the render. See our DaVinci Resolve vs. VanityFilter guide for a full walkthrough.

Will it run on my PC?

If it's a 64-bit Windows 10 (version 1809 or later) or Windows 11 machine, yes. Everything ships in the installer (no Python, plugins, or codec packs) and an NVIDIA GPU is a speed boost, not a requirement.

Do I need to be a video pro?

No. Pick one of five presets and drag the Strength slider. The preview updates live. Sixteen sliders across the treatment and mask are there when you need them, not as homework before you start.

Can I save my own settings?

Yes. Save a look to User 1 through User 4, or export a shareable preset file. Saved looks survive restarts and load from the command line, so you can apply the same treatment across a whole batch of clips.

What are the honest limits?

VanityFilter warns if it detects variable frame rate or cannot verify source timing. Export uses constant frame rate, so variable-rate footage can drift against its audio. Convert that source to constant frame rate first. Very small or heavily covered faces may be skipped; ear protection is limited on full profiles or when facial landmark tracking is lost.

How much does VanityFilter cost?

A one-time license is $49, currently on sale for $29.95. There is no subscription and no per-export fee. One license covers one person on up to two computers, with offline activation.

What video formats does it support?

Import MP4, MOV, AVI, or MKV. Export H.264 MP4 (GPU-accelerated on NVIDIA) or ProRes 422 HQ MOV. Source audio is included and re-encoded for the output format.

From the blog

Recent articles

Workflow

How to Smooth Skin in a Camtasia Recording

Walkthrough

How to Remove Blemishes from Video with VanityFilter 3.0

Release

VanityFilter 2.8.0: ear protection and easier exports

Get VanityFilter

One-time license. No subscription.

Sale price

Full license

$49 $29.95

One-time payment. Yours for good.

  • Desktop app + command-line tool
  • License for 1 user on 2 machines
  • License key delivered by email
  • Works fully offline
  • User manual included

Card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Cash App via Stripe, or PayPal / Venmo. Your key arrives by email within minutes.

30-day demo

Try it first

$9.95

The full app, for 30 days.

  • Every feature unlocked
  • Multi-face detection & GPU export
  • Works fully offline
  • Upgrade anytime, no reinstall

Same secure checkout, card or PayPal. Your key arrives by email within minutes; it simply stops after 30 days.