Beauty Box Video, Cosmo and Beauty Studio all smooth skin inside your editor, and they go about it three different ways. Beauty Box builds its mask from skin tones it detects on its own. Cosmo asks you to sample the skin with an eye dropper. Beauty Studio keys skin in two stages and hands you Mocha when the key needs help. This is a plugin-versus-plugin breakdown for editors who have already decided the retouch lives on the timeline: how each one finds skin, what you do on every shot, where it runs, and what it costs inside Premiere Pro, After Effects and DaVinci Resolve.
Beauty Box Video is the least setup per shot and the only one of the three with a one-time single-host price under $200. Cosmo is the lightest control set and comes only with a Red Giant or Maxon One subscription. Beauty Studio gives you the most control, including Mocha tracking inside the plugin, and Continuum is priced per host group as a subscription or a perpetual license. Prices below were read on each vendor’s page on October 13, 2026 and will change.
How Beauty Box Video finds skin
Beauty Box Video, from Digital Anarchy, is at version 6.0. Its page says the plugin “automatically identifies skin tones and creates a mask that limits the smoothing effect/shine reduction to the skin areas.” You apply the effect, run Analyze Frame on a representative frame, and the page describes that step as “automatically detecting and tracking skin tones” so the mask follows the subject through the clip. A separate AI tool “automatically identifies and masks the eyes, mouth, and teeth” for the whitening controls, and that tool asks you to “set how many faces are in the video.”
Per shot, the work is apply, analyze, check the mask view and set the amount. Because the smoothing mask is built from color, the thing to check before you render is what else in the frame shares that color, such as a wooden wall or a beige jacket. The mask view shows you exactly that. Digital Anarchy lists Premiere Pro, After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Avid and OpenFX applications such as DaVinci Resolve, and the store adds Motion and Nuke. There is a watermarked trial.
Pricing, from the Digital Anarchy store: $199.00 for a single license in one host app, with each additional host “usually $89” and, at the time of checking, an all-hosts add-on on sale for $49 against a regular $188. Digital Anarchy’s subscription page lists All Access at $199.00 a year for every plugin in every host and Single Host App at $149.00 a year. Our Beauty Box alternative guide covers the plugin against a standalone pass in more depth.
How Cosmo finds skin
Maxon’s Cosmo page carries the label “Part of Red Giant” and describes the plugin as a way to “quickly balance skin tones” with “intuitive skin color controls.” The selection starts with you. On the Red Giant features page, Maxon says “Cosmo’s Eye Dropper for Skin Sampling makes it easy to select skin within your shot” and that its “Selection controls allow you to see and control the skin selection so that you can be sure you are editing your subject, not your background.” The fourth listed feature is Adobe Multi-Frame Rendering support, so After Effects can spread the render across CPU cores.
Per shot, you sample the skin, check the selection and set the smoothing and tone controls. A new subject or a lighting change is a new sample. Maxon names no tracking feature for Cosmo, so what you get is a color selection you supervise, with no face tracking. The Cosmo page lists no hosts of its own; Maxon’s Red Giant page lists After Effects, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Apple Motion, Final Cut Pro, Avid Media Composer, Autograph and Cinema 4D as natively supported for Red Giant tools.
Pricing, from Maxon’s plans page: there is no Cosmo plan. Red Giant is $639.00 billed annually, or $85.00 a month on monthly billing, and Maxon One is $1,265.00 billed annually. Maxon’s footnote says the listed prices include the highest potential VAT rate and that the actual figure appears in the cart. The subscription brings the whole Red Giant set with it, which matters if you want the rest of it and costs you if you only want Cosmo. The Cosmo alternative guide goes through that math.
How Beauty Studio finds skin
Beauty Studio is a Continuum effect from Boris FX. Its page says “the integrated two-stage matte keyer helps isolate skin tones from surrounding areas of the shot,” and that “the PixelChooser system also includes Mocha’s masking and planar tracking system,” so you can draw B-spline shapes, track them and use them to add or protect regions such as eyes, lips and hair. The Continuum page adds that Face ML, Boris FX’s one-click facial segmentation, is “available inside Beauty Studio,” and the 2026.5 release notes list nose and neck segmentation as new in Face ML. Boris FX lists multi-pass smoothing, a sharpening pass to bring back detail, color correction, a film glow, a blend control and a side-by-side compare mode.
Per shot, you set the key, refine it, then add tracked masks where the key alone is not enough. That is the most steps of the three and the most control. It is also the only one of the three where tracking a region through a head turn is part of the plugin. Boris FX lists Continuum for Premiere Pro, After Effects, Avid Media Composer, DaVinci Resolve, Nuke and VEGAS Pro through OFX, Final Cut Pro and Motion, and the Beauty Studio page says the filter “offers multi-host support with a single license.”
Pricing, from the Boris FX store for the full Continuum collection, before taxes: the yearly subscription is $325.00 for Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro, the same for DaVinci Resolve, VEGAS Pro and other OFX hosts, $17.92 a month billed yearly for Final Cut Pro, $45.42 a month for Avid and $63.75 a month for all supported hosts. Perpetual licenses are $1,095.00 for Adobe or OFX hosts, $365.00 for Final Cut Pro, $1,865.00 for Avid and $2,195.00 for all hosts, with a 15-day money-back guarantee. Boris FX also lists Beauty Studio on its own as a premium filter and inside the Image Restoration unit; those store entries did not load for us, so check them for a lower entry price.
Head to head
| Plugin | Host apps | How skin is selected | Tracking and masks | Several faces | Licensing and price, checked October 13, 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beauty Box Video 6.0 | Premiere Pro, After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Motion, Avid, OpenFX (DaVinci Resolve, Nuke) | Automatic skin-tone detection and mask after Analyze Frame | Mask described as tracking skin tones through the clip; eyes, mouth and teeth auto-masked for whitening | Whitening tool asks how many faces are in the video; the smoothing mask is tone based, not per face | $199 single license for one host; extra hosts usually $89; subscriptions $149 a year for one host or $199 a year for all |
| Cosmo | Red Giant hosts: After Effects, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Motion, Final Cut Pro, Avid, Autograph, Cinema 4D | Eye dropper skin sample plus selection controls you adjust | No tracking feature named on Maxon’s pages | Not stated on Maxon’s pages | Red Giant $639.00 a year or $85.00 a month, or Maxon One $1,265.00 a year; no Cosmo-only plan; VAT included in the listed figure |
| Continuum Beauty Studio | Premiere Pro, After Effects, Avid, OFX (DaVinci Resolve, Nuke, VEGAS Pro), Final Cut Pro, Motion | Two-stage skin-tone keyer, plus Face ML one-click facial segmentation | Mocha masking and planar tracking inside the PixelChooser | Not stated for Beauty Studio; Boris FX’s separate Witness Protection ML effect detects any number of faces | Continuum from $325.00 a year or $1,095.00 perpetual for Adobe or OFX hosts; Final Cut Pro $17.92 a month or $365.00; all hosts $63.75 a month or $2,195.00; before taxes |
Which plugin fits which job
Single-subject interviews and talking heads
Any of the three will do the job on one person facing the camera under steady light. Beauty Box asks the least of you per clip, because the analysis builds the mask and you mostly judge the amount. If you already pay for Red Giant, Cosmo is on your machine and its sample-and-adjust routine is quick on a clip where the light never changes.
Heavy motion and VFX shots
Beauty Studio. The Mocha tracking inside the PixelChooser is built for a head that turns, a hand that crosses the face or a region you have to protect for the whole shot. The other two give you a color-based selection and leave the tracking to your host.
Quick warming and softening
Cosmo’s pitch is balancing skin tone with a light touch and few controls. If the job is “take the edge off and warm it up” across a whole project, that short control set is the point.
Budget
Beauty Box is the only one of the three you can own outright for under $200 in one host. Continuum’s perpetual license for Final Cut Pro is $365, and the Adobe and OFX perpetuals are over a thousand dollars because you are buying the whole collection. Cosmo has no price of its own: it is $639 a year for Red Giant, and the question is whether you want the rest of Red Giant.
The timeline cost of any plugin
Whichever one you choose, it runs as an effect on the timeline. Every preview re-renders it, every export renders it again, and a change to a mask or a slider invalidates what the host had cached for that clip. On one interview that is a cost you will not notice. On a multicam edit with the effect copied to forty clips, the render queue is where you find out what the plugin costs in time. Check whether your host’s GPU acceleration covers the effect, how it caches an effect applied to a nested sequence or adjustment layer, and whether a sharpening or color pass sits above or below the smoothing. None of this is specific to one vendor. It is the price of keeping the retouch adjustable inside the edit, which is why most editors pick a plugin in the first place.
If you would rather not use a plugin
A standalone pass processes the footage once, before the edit, and the file you import is already done. VanityFilter is our standalone Windows app for that job. For the full comparison that includes standalone tools alongside the plugins, read our skin retouching software comparison, and for a shorter guide to deciding where the smoothing should happen, the Windows skin smoothing comparison covers that choice. If you grade in Resolve Studio already, the Resolve guide walks through Face Refinement before you buy anything.
Frequently asked questions
Is Cosmo still sold on its own?
Not as of October 13, 2026. Maxon labels Cosmo “Part of Red Giant”, and its plans page lists Red Giant at $639.00 billed annually and Maxon One at $1,265.00 billed annually with no Cosmo line item. Maxon notes that its listed prices include the highest potential VAT rate and the final figure appears in the cart.
Which of the three supports DaVinci Resolve?
All three. Digital Anarchy lists Beauty Box Video for OpenFX applications such as DaVinci Resolve. Maxon lists DaVinci Resolve among the hosts Red Giant tools support natively. Boris FX lists DaVinci Resolve as an OFX host for Continuum.
Do any of them track a moving face automatically?
Beauty Box Video describes its Analyze Frame step as automatically detecting and tracking skin tones. Beauty Studio includes Mocha’s masking and planar tracking inside its PixelChooser, plus Face ML for one-click facial segmentation. Cosmo’s page describes an eye dropper for sampling skin and selection controls, and names no tracking feature.
Which of the three is a one-time purchase?
Beauty Box Video sells a single license at $199 for one host app, and Boris FX sells perpetual Continuum licenses starting at $365 for Final Cut Pro and $1,095 for Adobe or OFX hosts. Cosmo comes only with a Red Giant or Maxon One subscription.
Do I need Mocha Pro to use the tracking in Beauty Studio?
No. Boris FX says the PixelChooser inside Beauty Studio includes Mocha’s masking and planar tracking system, so you can draw and track mask shapes without leaving the plugin.
Prices on this page were read on October 13, 2026 from each vendor’s own site. Check them again before you buy.