Changelog

Projects and more control over feature protection

Save a session and return to it later. Adjust the protected area around facial features and check which faces are included before exporting.

• Save your session. Project files (.vain) restore clips, settings and export options. Open them from Explorer with a double-click. Close Project (Ctrl+W) returns to an empty workspace without quitting the app.
• Feature protection. Lip margin, Eyebrow margin and Feature feathering adjust protection around lips and brows. Protect ears is on by default, and ear protection follows head turns more closely.
• Face selection. Ignored faces have gray boxes and labels. Detected, selected and ignored counts make the selection visible; Ignore small faces now shows its threshold as a percentage.
• Optional detector setting. YuNet 640 (experimental) is off by default. It changes the fallback face detector input size. Try a short range and compare detection before using it for a full export; it is not a guaranteed speed improvement.
• Export processing. Processing stages overlap to make better use of multi-core CPUs. Speed depends on footage, settings and hardware; output can differ slightly from 3.0.

New settings are saved with presets and projects. Older settings files use the defaults. Review a short rendered range before processing a full clip.

More selective skin repair, with eyelid protection

Blemish removal leaves the experimental phase. This release improves repair targeting and consistency across frames, with stronger redness correction for broad flushed areas.

• Blemish repair. Better targeting of small acne spots and fewer inconsistent repairs between frames. Results still depend on the footage and settings.
• Redness reduction. Broader flushed areas are corrected using less-red skin as a reference, with limits intended to preserve natural warmth.
• Protect eyelids. Enabled by default under Mask shape. Extends protection over the upper eyelids in preview and export, and is saved with presets. Turning it off keeps basic eye protection.
• Interface. The selected preview zoom is highlighted. The licensed name moves to About VanityFilter. Updated app icons and Sputnik Digital Effects branding.

Review a short rendered range before exporting a full clip, especially with occlusions or poor-quality source footage.

Ear protection and a smoother export workflow

Skin retouching now protects the ear area when facial landmarks are available. The Export panel remembers your preferences and opens the completed result.

Added

• Ear protection in the skin mask, with a soft transition at the face boundary. Protection is limited on full profiles or when facial landmark tracking is lost.
• Play the latest completed result or open its output folder from the Export panel.
• Remember the output folder, codec, mask-video option and settings-file preference. Trim times and source-specific filenames are not saved as defaults.
• Warnings for detected variable frame rate or inconclusive timing checks. Export still uses constant frame rate, so affected footage can drift against its audio. Convert it to constant frame rate first.

Fixed

• Check all batch inputs and output destinations together, including mask videos and settings files. Reject destinations that would replace a source and give colliding output groups distinct names.
• Encode to a temporary file. An encoding failure or cancellation leaves an existing completed video intact.
• Prevent new files from loading during processing through either Open control or shared loading methods.
• Keep blemish repairs inside the skin mask, including after resizing and feathering.
• More reliable update announcements, with English and Spanish release notes and clear connection-error feedback. A failed manual check no longer reports that the app is up to date. Video processing and license checks remain offline.
• Validate saved settings and improve recovery messages for encoding and saved-data errors. Update links open the official download page.

Performance

Disabled processing passes are skipped, and combining face masks uses less temporary memory. In our brightness-only H.264 test, exports took about 31% less time than v2.7: 25.6 seconds versus 37.0 seconds. These are averages of two exports per version on an Intel Core i7-13700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080. Standard processing was comparable in our tests. Results vary with footage, settings and hardware.

Latin American Spanish, reliable update checks, and clearer menus

VanityFilter now has a complete Latin American Spanish interface. This release also repairs manual update checks and restores visible hover feedback in the app menus.

Added

• Latin American Spanish. Choose Español from the Language menu to switch all 179 interface strings, including tooltips and error messages. The selection applies after restarting the app. Number formatting continues to follow Windows regional settings.
• Spanish user manual. The installer now includes a full Latin American Spanish PDF manual alongside the English one, each with its own Start Menu entry, and the Spanish download page links to it.
• Menu hover feedback. Help and preset menus now highlight the item under the pointer.

Fixed

• Check for Updates now always responds. Manual checks no longer fail silently after the automatic startup check.

Blemish removal, and every control explains itself

The headline feature is one our redness filter could never deliver: actual acne removal. A pimple is not just red; it is darker and textured too, so this release adds a dedicated healing pass instead of another color adjustment.

Added

• Blemish removal (experimental). A new Skin slider heals small acne and blemish spots by rebuilding them from the surrounding skin, before smoothing runs, so the repairs pick up natural texture. It recognises both red inflamed spots and the darker pigmentation-type spots more common on deeper skin tones. Isolated moles, beauty marks, freckles, and stubble are deliberately preserved: a mole is part of a face, a breakout is not. Marked experimental because results vary with skin tone and acne type, and it will keep getting smarter.
• Every slider explains itself. Hover the small ⓘ next to any control's name for a plain-language explanation of what it does. Nothing pops up while you are actually dragging a slider.

Fixed

• Drag and drop now works on the preview area: previously the largest part of the window silently refused drops, and only the surrounding panels accepted them.
• Hold-Space compare works no matter what you clicked last. Space was only recognised in rare focus states; now it flips to the original from anywhere except while typing in a text field.

The creator update: trim exports, per-face control, shareable presets

Everything in 2.5 came from watching how creators actually work: test a section before you commit, smooth the right person, share a look, and know how long the render will take.

Added

• Trim / range export. Export just part of a clip: set In and Out on the Export panel (seconds or mm:ss). Dial in your look, render ten seconds, check it in your editor, then commit to the full export. Audio is cut to exactly the same frames, so trimmed exports stay perfectly in sync.
• Primary face only. One tick on the Mask shape panel and VanityFilter smooths only the largest, most central face: bystanders and background faces stay untouched. A second control skips faces below a chosen size, so crowds behind your subject are left alone.
• Shareable presets. Export your look as a small .vfpreset file and send it to anyone; import theirs from the preset menu. User preset slots doubled from two to four.
• Hold Space to compare. Hold the space bar to flip the preview to the original, release to go back. The fastest possible before/after.
• Drag and drop. Drop clips anywhere on the window: one file or a whole batch.
• Export time estimate. The status bar shows the processing rate and time remaining, per file in batches.

Faster

• Shine removal and Reduce redness are much faster at high resolutions: about 1.6x at 4K and 1.8x at 1080p on the full smoothing stage when those passes are turned up. The built-in presets render exactly as before, pixel for pixel.

Easier license entry and a signed Windows installer

Version 2.1 fixes the license problems that could block ordinary customers. It also introduces a Microsoft-verified Sputnik Digital LLC publisher signature.

Fixed and improved

• Wrapped license keys now work. Spaces and line breaks added by email clients no longer cause a valid key to be rejected.
• License keys can be replaced in the app. Help > Activate License lets you enter a renewal or upgrade without reinstalling.
• Expiring licenses are clearer. The status bar shows the remaining days, and an expired license still allows previews while blocking export with useful next steps.
• Buy links go to the correct page. License prompts now open the VanityFilter purchase page.
• Windows publisher verification. The application and installer are signed as Sputnik Digital LLC and timestamped through Microsoft Artifact Signing.

An all-new interface, new skin controls, and faster processing

This started as 1.4 and grew into a full 2.0: a redesigned interface, three new skin controls, and a documented pass over the speed work.

Added

• An all-new interface. The whole app got a redesign. Your footage now fills the window, the controls sit in floating panels you can slide out of the way, and a slim icon rail runs down the side with view and zoom chips right over the image. On a laptop the preview is about 2.5 times taller than the old layout, so you see far more of your video as you work. Cleaner chrome throughout, with the gradient Start button as the one strong accent.
• Amount slider (master wet/dry). A new dial at the top of the Smoothing column. Set your look with the detail sliders, then ease the whole effect (smoothing, texture repair, shine, redness, and brighten together) back toward the untouched original with one move. No re-tuning.
• Shine removal. A new slider that tames the specular hot spots from oily skin or hard lighting. Each bright spot gets rebuilt from the surrounding skin tone, color included, so corrected areas keep natural skin color instead of going gray. Normal highlights on the nose and cheekbones, and the catchlights in the eyes, stay exactly where they should.
• Reduce redness. A new slider that evens out red blotches, rosacea, and flush by easing them toward your own baseline skin tone, not a flat cold shift, so your overall warmth stays exactly as shot. It works on color only, so skin texture and lightness stay untouched, and your lips keep their color.
• In-app update notifications. VanityFilter checks for new versions on launch and shows a banner when one is ready, with a one-click link to download and a Skip this version option. A Check for Updates item sits in the Help menu, and you can switch automatic checks off any time. No account, no telemetry, fully offline-safe.
• Remembers your window. VanityFilter reopens at the size and position you left it, so your layout is right where you want it every time.

Under the hood

• Downscaled face detection. Faces are found on a smaller copy of each frame and mapped back with no loss, so detection stays quick even on 4K footage.
• Half-rate cached segmentation. The heaviest step, separating skin from everything else, runs at reduced resolution and reuses its result on alternate frames during export. The temporal blend hides the difference and roughly halves that step's cost.
• Smarter smoothing. The smoothing filter works only on the area around each face and scales down when that area is large, so 4K exports stay fast.
• GPU export. With an NVIDIA card, H.264 export runs on the GPU, freeing your CPU cores for the processing itself. It falls back to CPU automatically.

Brighten and saved looks

Added

• Brighten control. A LAB lightness lift that gives skin a healthy glow with no color shift and no blown highlights. It runs independently of smoothing, so you can warm up a face without softening a single pore.
• Savable user presets. Dial in a look and save it to User 1 or User 2. Your presets survive restarts and load from the command line, so a whole batch of clips gets the same treatment with one flag.

Fixed and improved

• Switching presets now updates the live preview instantly.
• Glow stays natural even on already-bright footage, because the gamma curve lifts midtones without clipping.

Multiple faces, multiple previews

Added

• Multi-person support. Detects and masks up to five faces per frame, each with its own mask, including heads turned to profile.
• Multi-frame preview. Generate a set of sample frames across the timeline (1 to 15), or add a specific timecode, and step through them with Prev and Next before you commit to a render.
• Four preview modes. Processed, Mask overlay, Original, and Side by side, so you can confirm exactly where the mask lands.
• Missed-face indicator. A per-frame "Detected faces" count that turns red when a face is missed.
• Region controls. Forehead coverage, neck coverage, and face expansion sliders, plus texture repair for blotches and compression noise.

Fixed and improved

• Temporal mask stabilization smooths the mask across frames, so it no longer flickers between cuts.
• Masks now fade out gracefully on frames where a face is too small or covered, instead of popping in and out.

Built for the edit

Added

• ProRes 422 HQ export alongside H.264, with the original audio preserved.
• Grayscale mask matte export. A luma track matte you can drop straight into Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve.
• JSON settings sidecar written next to every export, recording the exact settings of the render.
• Batch processing. Point the app or the included command-line tool at a whole folder and walk away.

Fixed and improved

• GPU-accelerated H.264 encoding on NVIDIA cards for roughly double the export speed.
• Cleaner cancel and error handling, so a stopped or failed render never leaves half-written files behind.

The first cut

Added

• Natural skin smoothing for video with precise per-person masks that keep eyes, lips, hair, hats, glasses, and clothing exactly as shot.
• Five presets (Light touch, Standard, Heavy, Low-light repair, Face only) plus fine-tuning sliders for strength, skin tolerance, feathering, detail, and mask stability.
• Live preview at up to 400 percent zoom with mask overlays.
• H.264 MP4 export and a command-line tool.
• Fully offline, one-time license, no account required.