Smooth skintones in video footage. BEFORE AFTER Beauty Box Video for After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro Digital Anarchy Smart tools for creative minds www.digitalanarchy.com
Beauty Box Video: Table of Contents Introduction to Beauty Box 1 Simple automatic workflow 1 Customize the results 1 Auto-mask results vs Hand Masking 2 Selling Beauty Box to Clients 2 Overview of Interface 3 Analyze Group 4 Analyze Frame button 4 How It Works 4 About Beauty Box keyframes 6 Choosing the frame to analyze 6 When to re-click Analyze 7 Keyframes popup 8 Linear 8 Bezier 8 Hold 8 Analyze All button 9 When to use Analyze All 9 Problem with Analyze All 10 Example #1 10 Example #2 11 So why did we include Analyze All? 11 Face Detection 12 Face option 12 Eye option 12 Error message: Face detection has failed 13 Tips about choosing a different frame 13 No error message in Analyze All 13 Skin Smoothing Controls 14 How It Works 14 Resolution and Smoothing 14 Smoothing Amount 14 Example of Smoothing Amount 15 Mask affects Smoothing Amount 16 Smoothing Radius 17 Image Contrast & Smoothing 17 Smoothing Example #2 17
Beauty Box Video: Table of Contents Skin Detail Amount 19 More Detail = Less Smoothing 19 Smoothing Radius with Skin Detail 19 Smoothing Example #3 19 Info Only> Bounds 1, Bounds 2 19 Mask Group 21 How It Works 21 Why use Mask controls? 21 Show Mask popup 21 Show Mask> Off 21 Show Mask> Quick 22 Show Mask> On 22 Using Quick vs On 23 Quickstart for a custom mask 23 Mode popup 24 Mode> Off 24 Mode> Set Color 24 Mode> Add Color 25 Dark Color, Light Color 25 Look at Mode through Mask view 26 About the Falloff Controls 27 Hue Falloff 27 Saturation Falloff 28 Value Falloff 28 Mask Input popup 29 NOTE: Set Mask Channel to Luminance 29 Path popup 30 Black and white areas 30 NOTE: Set Timeline Mask mode to None 30 Feather 31 Invert checkbox 32 Fine Detail Controls 33 Sharpen> Use Mask checkbox 33 Sharpen> Amount 33 Preserve>Preserve Edges 34 Preserve> Preserve Grain 34
Beauty Box Video: Introduction Introduction to Beauty Box Welcome to Beauty Box, the next generation in skin retouching software! By using advanced techniques like face detection, we can automatically identify skin tones, making the process of skin retouching easier than ever. At Digital Anarchy, our purpose is not just about creating cool effects. We want to create cool effects that make your life easier and fit into your workflow without having to spend hours learning to do the most basic things. Simple automatic workflow The initial workflow is simple: 1. Move the Time Marker. Choose a frame that has the face you wish to retouch. 2. Click the Analyze Frame button. This generates an auto-mask. 3. Set Smoothing settings. This tells the mask how to treat certain skin areas. 4. Render. In most cases, that s it. The Analyze Frame button uses face detection to determine where to sample the skin tones from. The mask that is created will quite often not need any further adjustment. Just set the appropriate values for the Smoothing parameters and you re off! (See Analyze Group> Analyze Frame for more info.) Customize the results If you re not satisfied with the result, you can tweak the mask in Beauty Box. You can also use a different layer if you ve already created a mask with a different keyer or roto tool. The Beauty Box mask will be good if you have fairly consistent light on the face. However, if there are lots of highlights and shadows, you ll probably need to do some tweaking. You may also need to make some adjustments if the skin tones are very similar to hair or background objects. 1
Beauty Box Video: Introduction Auto-mask results vs Hand Masking The goal of Beauty Box s auto-mask is to generate a mask that s good enough for most situations. As with any mask that s automatically generated, it will usually be possible to improve on the automask result. However, in most cases (we hope :-), the extra effort to manually create the mask won t produce enough of an improvement to justify the work. The auto-mask will do a good enough job on its own. This auto-mask is especially important for designers under tight deadlines or without additional masking tools readily available. Selling Beauty Box to Clients If you re switching Beauty Box on and off for a client so they can see the before/ after, the effect can sometimes seem a bit extreme. People aren t used to seeing an actor with/without makeup (essentially) at a click of the button, so the image may strike them as looking fake. We are more critical of work when we know what has been done to the piece. It often helps to bring in a third person, someone who hasn t been looking at the before image. Play back the image rendered with Beauty Box and get his opinion without telling him about the effect applied. About 90% of the time, he will think it looks great. This opinion may go a long way to convincing the client that the fake look is pretty much what you see with regular makeup all the time. Failing that, just tell your client to sit down on the leather couch and quietly drink his cappuccino. 2
Beauty Box Video: Introduction Overview of Interface Beauty Box is pretty simple to use. Choose your frame, click the Analyze Frame button, and let the plugin render. Here is an overview of the controls. Smoothing group Info Only group Mask group Preserve group Sharpen group Analyze group 3
Beauty Box Video: Analyze Group Analyze Group This section covers the Analyze group. These parameters are where the initial work happens. The most important control is the Analyze Frame button. Analyze Frame button The Analyze Frame button is the single most important parameter in the plugin. Clicking on Analyze Frame tells Beauty Box that you want to use the current frame to determine the skin tones that will be smoothed. How It Works When Analyze Frame is clicked, the frame at the Time Marker is analyzed. Beauty Box uses Face Detection to determine where the face is, then determines what skin tones are needed to create a mask. The mask is used to control where the skin smoothing is applied. Analyze Frame sets a regular keyframe in the Timeline for the Dark Color, Light Color and three Falloff color parameters. The amount of smoothing added is set in the Skin Smoothing section. The amount of white, gray or black in the mask can affect how much smoothing is set in certain areas of the face. If this mask is not desirable, you can use the Mask controls, particularly Mode> Add Color, to increase the color range that is masked off. 4
Beauty Box Video: Analyze Group Original Please zoom in to view the results. Beauty Box 5
Beauty Box Video: Analyze Group About Beauty Box keyframes By default, Beauty Box sets down regular keyframes. This means the skin colors will animate because the Color parameters will be interpolating. This effect is desirable if there s not a lot of color variation in your subject and the lighting in the scene more or less stays the same. If there are a lot of scene changes, then Hold keyframes are more appropriate on the frame where the scene changes. If the colors are interpolating, you don t want to use regular keyframes that would have wildly different colors. A Hold keyframe means there s no interpolation set, and the keyframe holds the color value until the next keyframe. You can change Beauty Box s keyframes from regular to Hold with the Keyframes popup. Alternately, you can change the keyframes manually in the host application s Timeline. See Analyze Group> Keyframes popup for more info. Choosing the frame to analyze It s best to run Analyze Frame on the first good frame of your clip that has the subject s face (the subject you want to smooth) as front and center as possible. The Face Detection will work better on faces that are fully turned towards the camera. For clips that feature talking heads and other content where the lighting is static, you should only have to click Analyze Frame once. If the lighting or scene changes, you ll want to find the first frame after the change that has a face and click Analyze Frame again. This will set new keyframes, so that the smoothing is adjusted for the new lighting. 6
Beauty Box Video: Analyze Group When to re-click Analyze In general, you only need to click Analyze Frame once. You will click Analyze Frame at the beginning of your work session to run Beauty Box. The button does not need to be re-clicked when you change a setting in the plugin. The exception is if something significant changes in your footage. This could be the lighting, the scene, a camera angle. Anywhere the coloration of the skin changes significantly, you will want to move your Time Marker to a frame that signifies the change, then re-click Analyze Frame. Doing so sets down new keyframes for the color parameters that the mask is based on. By default, the keyframe that s set down is a regular keyframe that will interpolate between colors. This is great for slight changes in the skin tones due to lighting or head movement. However, if the lighting changes dramatically or the scene changes, you ll want to use Hold keyframes. The thing to be aware of is that whenever you do re-analyze, the face needs to be visible. Preferably a front view, but a side view is fine too. Enough of the face needs to be seen for the face detection to work. NOTE: Another exception is if you click the Reset button in the Effects Controls palette. Then Beauty Box is reset and the Analyze process needs to happen again. Original Beauty Box Please zoom in to view the results. 7
Beauty Box Video: Analyze Group Keyframes popup Use the Keyframes popup to choose the kind of keyframe you want Beauty Box to apply. These keyframes are set in the Timeline for the Dark Color, Light Color and three Falloff color parameters. You must set the Keyframe option BEFORE you click the Analyze Frame button. There are three keframe choices: Linear, Bezier and Hold. Of course, you can change the keyframe type manually in the Timeline if you decide later that you want different keyframes. Linear The default setting. This sets down regular (or linear) keyframes for the Beauty Box settings. Using Linear keyframes means the skin colors will animate because the Color parameters will be interpolating. This effect is desirable if there s limited color variation in your subject and the lighting in the scene more or less stays the same. Bezier This sets a Bezier keyframe. Unless you manually edit the Bezier curve, this will behave like a Linear keyframe. It s unlikely that you will need to use this keyframe type, but we have included the option for completeness. Hold If the lighting changes dramatically or the scene changes, you ll want to use Hold keyframes. Hold keyframes are good to use on the frame where the scene changes. A Hold keyframe means there s no interpolation set, and the keyframe holds the color value until the next keyframe. 8
Beauty Box Video: Analyze Group Analyze All button While Analyze Frame looks at one frame to create its mask, Analyze All looks at the entire footage. It essentially does an analyze frame for every frame. When Analyze All is clicked, each frame in the footage is analyzed. Beauty Box uses Face Detection to determine where the face is, then determines what skin tones are needed to create a mask. The mask is used to control where the skin smoothing is applied. Analyze All sets regular keyframes at each frame in the Timeline for the Dark Color, Light Color and three Falloff parameters. Using All instead Frame doesn t add anything to your final render time at the end. However, the plugin does have to go through and process each frame, so depending how many frames there are, that process may take while. When to use Analyze All Analyze All is for a situation where you have a lot of changes in your footage. If you re just shooting a talking head, you can use Analyze Frame because so little changes in the lighting, camera angle and color palette. If you re doing a shot where the camera is swinging around the person s head or the subject is moving their head frequently, there will be different skin tones that need to be recognized, and Analyze All will be very useful. 9
Beauty Box Video: Analyze Group Problem with Analyze All A problem that arises with Analyze All is that the Face Detection may fail or come across a frame where it produces incorrect results. For example, occasionally when Beauty Box samples someone s face, it will sample her eye, eyebrow or some other area that isn t skin. In After Effects, if you look at the Color chip parameters in the Timeline, you will see a gradient of how the colors change over time. It makes it very easy to identify where there are abrupt color changes. You can then just delete those keyframes. This is exteremely important as those colors will affect the mask significantly. This could cause Beauty Box to dramatically change for a frame or two. You don t want to do a full HD render just to realize that a couple frames suddenly look different. Looking at the gradient in the timeline created by the keyframes is a quick and easy way of avoiding this problem (or just manually set a few keyframes with Analyze Frame). Following are two shots of the After Effects Tmeline which illustrate the problems that can occur when using Analyze All. Example #1 Our first example shows pretty consistent colors. There s a little variation (as indicated by the #1) but that is to be expected. This Timeline was taken from a standard talking head shot in which the lighting and head movement didn t really change much. That lack of variation makes it easy for the Face Detection to find the face and identify skin tones. To fix this issue, you might want to delete the keyframes that are a little different than the average, but you might not. Maybe the lighting changed slightly or the model put her head back to laugh and caused the skin tones to vary a bit. Since there s only a small amount of variation, the mask created is unlikely to be affected too much, and you can probably just leave it as is. This solution is in direct contrast to our second example. 10
Beauty Box Video: Analyze Group Example #2 In our second example, the footage used has a lot of head movement. This causes problems for the Face Detector. You can see that the skin values (indicated by the #1 areas) are all over the place, until the very end (indicated by the #2). At the end, the person stops moving around and just looks at the camera, and the color values at the end become smooth. So this was not a good clip to run Analyze All on. The Face Detector even completely failed once resulting in blue colors (#3). If you run Analyze All and come up with a Timeline that looks like our second example (above), you would almost certainly need to delete the keyframes where the colors turn blue. You d most likely want to clean up some of the other keyframes where the colors are really different from the average. All of this means you could potentially spend a lot of time cleaning up this analysis. That s not the purpose of Analyze All. A better solution is to just select a few important frames in the clip and run Analyze Frame a few times. So why did we include Analyze All? Analyze All is potentially useful in some situations. Since our goal was to make the Beauty Box workflow easy and allow people to save time doing this type of work, it is important to include all potentially useful tools. But that means explaining (as we do here) that for most footage, Analyze All is not the appropriate way to keyframe. Analyze All is not in the Final Cut Pro version of Beauty Box. That was mainly because of technical reasons due to the way Final Cut Pro handles keyframing. 11
Beauty Box Video: Analyze Group Face Detection When you hit Analyze Frame, Beauty Box will normally look for a face to base its mask on. If that detection fails, you ll get an error message letting you know. Face option By default, Face Detection is set to the Face option. Makes sense, right? Typically you will not need (or want!) to change this choice. Face Detection is set to how Beauty Box works best, which is using the Face option. If you receive an failure message, we sugegst moving the Time Marker to a different frame where the face is more towards the camera, then running Analyze Frame again. The Face Detection can sometimes have trouble with faces that are tilted back or at a 3/4 angle. Beauty Box should be able to identify side profile faces, but a face that is fully towards the camera is ideal. Ideal pose for Beauty Box detection Also note that sometimes Face Detection will not technically fail, but will detect a different object in the scene and sample the colors from that. This is what we call a false positive. It always helps to check the color chips to make sure they look right. See the section on Analyze All for an example of this. Eye option If the Face option isn t working, you can set the Face Detection popup to Eye. In this case, the face detector will look for an eye, not an entire face. However, this results in lower quality color sampling and more false positives. We usually recommend doing this only as a last resort on clips where there s a lot of changes and manual color sampling using the Mode tools (Set Color, Add Color) would be too tedious. Usually you re better off just doing a manual sampling than using the Eye detector. Less ideal for Beauty Box detection Not ideal for Beauty Box detection 12
Beauty Box Video: Analyze Group Error message: Face detection has failed When using the Analyze Frame button, you may see this warning. You will not see it when running the Analyze All button. As we mentioned, the Face Detection does not always work with the inital frame that you sample, and this error message is just a warning letting you know that failure happened. Face Detection works by looking for a specific pattern eyes, nose, mouth and if it doesn t see those objects, it may fail. Usually you can switch to a different frame where the face is more visible, click Analyze Frame again, and Beauty Box will work fine. For instance, if the model s mouth or eyes aren t visible, this may throw off the face detection. Just move your Time Marker to a frame where more (or all) of the face is shown and Analyze Frame should work. Or you can choose identify the skin tones manually using the Mode> Set Color and Add Color tools. Read about Mode tools. Tips about choosing a different frame We have said this already but good info is best repeated. A good sample frame has a lot of the face visible. It s best if you have as clear of shot of the face as possible. For example, Beauty Box can identify a side profile with only one eye, but it does significantly better if you show the whole face. Also keep in mind you only need to click Analyze Frame once if the lighting/scene doesn t change. Read more in Choosing the frame to analyze and When to re-click Analyze. No error message in Analyze All You will only see this warning for Analyze Frame. Analyze All suppresses the failure message. However, the failure still occurs. This is one of the reasons we don t recommend using Analyze All and why the function is not available in FCP. Analyze All tries harder to find something it can identify (a face, an eye, whatever) so it fails less than Analyze Frame, but it generates more false positives. This means it identifies something as a face that isn t a face. Analyze All then sets keyframes for incorrect colors. It s definitely useful in some situations, but you need to go through the results and delete any keyframes that don t have correct colors. Read about Analyze All. 13
Beauty Box Video: Smoothing Controls Skin Smoothing Controls This section covers the three Smoothing controls. Beauty is somewhat subjective, as is photography. The right combination will depend on the image, the resolution of the image and your personal tastes. That said, the default Smoothing values try to provide the best generic combination of settings. Let s look at how. How It Works The Smoothing controls work together to smooth over wrinkles and blemishes. There are no fixed settings to provide the best look. Smoothing Amount and Smoothing Radius really control the look of the skin. Skin Detail amount can add back a bit of lost skin texture, but it s not usually what you re going to adjust. Amount and Radius are the primary controls. Resolution and Smoothing Resolution plays greatly into how much the Smoothing controls work. For instance, a 3,000 x 3,000 pixel image will be affected differently than a 300 x 300 pixel image. Bigger images require higher settings; smaller images will require lower settings. The default settings should work pretty well for HD footage. If you re using SD footage you may wish to use smaller amounts like 18, 4, 8. For very high resolution images, increasing Smoothing Amount to 35 and Radius to 20 can be beneficial. NOTE: The settings that will produce a similar result to our examples in this manual will depend, in part, on the resolution of your footage. Smoothing Amount Smoothing Amount is the master control. The higher you set Amount, the more smoothing you ll have. Default value is 25%. Value range is 0-100, measured in percentage. A value of 0 turns off the Beauty Box effect. The realistic range is from about 15 to 25%. Much higher than that and the subject starst to look too smooth or plastic. The eyebrows get smoothed out unnatually, significant lines that define facial features are smoothed out, and you lose contrast. If you re going for a very stylized look, a high Amount can work out but usually you will want your actors to look realistic. It s important to find a good, balanced setting where blemishes and some wrinkles are removed, but the actor is not reduced to looking like a mannequin. 14
Beauty Box Video: Smoothing Controls Example of Smoothing Amount Original photo Smoothing Amount, setting of 35 Good balance between smooth skin and image contrast. Please zoom in to view the results. Smoothing Amount, low settings Smoothing Amount, high settings Still blotchy, needs more smoothing. Loss of contrast in eyes, nose and mouth. 15
Beauty Box Video: Smoothing Controls Smoothing Example #1, continued Our example on the previous page is 2000 x 2000 pixels, slightly bigger than a High Definition (HD) image. The good settings for Smoothing Amount are similar to the Beauty Box defaults, which usually work well for HD. If the Amount setting is too low, like our low settings version, then you don t have enough smoothing to really make a difference. If you go too high, as in the high settings version, everything starts to look fake and plastic. It s important to find a balance with Smoothing Amount. Mask affects Smoothing Amount The Smoothing Amount is greatly affected by the mask that is generated by Beauty Box. The amount of smoothing will be reduced in areas that aren t 100% white, which means the Amount acts as a maximum amount. Where the mask is 100% white, the Amount will be exactly as you set it. Where the mask is less than 100% white, the actual amount of smoothing applied will be less than what s shown in the Amount value. For example, if the area is 50% gray, the amount of smoothing will be 50% of the Smoothing Amount value. Below, we are viewing the Beauty Box mask with the Show Mask> On option. The main skin surface around the eyes, cheeks, chin, nose and forehead are white, and 100% white gets 100% smoothing treatment. Notice that as the Smooth settings are raised higher, the area around the eyes gets darker, which reduces the amount of smoothing. Beauty Box, good settings 16 Beauty Box, high settings
Beauty Box Video: Smoothing Controls Smoothing Radius Smoothing Radius controls the amount of smoothing on large skin features. Default value is 10. Value range is 0-30. The range goes up to 100 if you numerically input the value. The effective range is really about 5-30. Above 30, you lose too much contrast. Radius will smooth over large regions, so when you crank this value up, you really lower the image contrast. This may work out okay for some images, but for most shots, it s not going to give you the ideal look. Image Contrast & Smoothing Smoothing Radius and skin smoothing in general tends to reduce the contrast of the image. It s important to keep that in mind when you re adjusting the settings. Look out for when the contrast reduction is too much. Although... Some reduction in contrast can be a good thing. For instance, highlights caused by a flash or strobe can be too bright, and reducing the shine on the skin is beneficial. The benefits of using Smooth Radius will depend on factors like the look you re going for, and how the image was shot in the first place. Smoothing Example #2 On the next page, our footage is very high resolution image at 3400x2700 pixels. For this example, we have only adjusted the Smoothing Radius. Increasing the Smoothing Radius causes the Smoothing Amount to smooth over a larger area. If you have someone with a lot of freckles or blotchy skin, increasing Smoothing Radius is one way to deal with it. The model s freckles just turn blotchy at low Smoothing Radius settings. However, if Radius is set too high, then the image loses a LOT of contrast. This is the downside to Smoothing Radius; the more you increase it, the more contrast you lose. At high settings, the face will almost look totally flat, which is usually not a good look. In our example, the Good Settings version finds a nice balance in which the setting looks smooth, getting rid of the blotchy look, but we still have good contrast. It helps that this image doesn t have a great deal of contrast to begin with. You can see the difference between the Good and High settings if you look around the eyes, nose, and mouth. 17
Beauty Box Video: Smoothing Controls Example of Smoothing Radius Original photo Smoothing Amount, setting of 35 Good balance between smooth skin and image contrast. Please zoom in to view the results. Smoothing Amount, low settings Smoothing Amount, high settings Still blotchy, needs more smoothing. Loss of contrast in eyes, nose and mouth. 18
Beauty Box Video: Smoothing Controls Skin Detail Amount Skin Detail reveals the texture and detail in the skin. Default value is 5. Value range is 0-30. The range goes up to 100 if you numerically input the value. The default produces a fair amount of smoothing. If you d like more texture in the skin, then increase Skin Detail up to around 30-40. The effective range is 1-100. The effects can be somewhat subtle, so moving between 5 and 10 will probably show little difference. Moving between 5 and 90 should show a significant difference however. WARNING: High Skin Detail settings can result in significantly higher render times. A value of 30 to 50 is usually a good compromise between amount of skin texture and speed. More Detail = Less Smoothing The higher that Detail Amount is set, the more texture and detail you ll see in the skin. The tradeoff is that this offsets the amount of smoothing you ll see, so Skin Detail is sort of an anti-smoothing control. Increase the Skin Detail to get back some of the detail you ve lost by turning up Smoothing Amount and Smoothing Radius. Smoothing Radius with Skin Detail Increasing the Skin Detail Amount is almost a necessity if you have a high Smoothing Radius, and can produce some very good looks. If you have a low Smoothing Radius (1 or 2), Skin Detail will have very little effect. A relatively high Smoothing Radius (like 25) combined with a high Skin Detail (50-60) can produce a very good look. This will provide good smoothing of larger skin details while keeping a lot of texture and contrast. Smoothing Example #3 On the next page, we show a comparison of Smoothing Amount and Smoothing Radius. Our example footage is quite large, 3700x2800 pixels, so we ve increased the settings from the default values. When an image is this large, it s going to require a bit more smoothing than something that is High Definition (HD) at 1920x1080. However, don t assume that more is always better. It s not. In the high settings version, the face can get too smooth, lose contrast, and start to look a bit fake. Info Only> Bounds 1, Bounds 2 Bounds 1 and Bounds 2 identify the bounding box of the face that Beauty Box has found. You can t acually do anything with the Bounds parameters. They are included for informational purposes only. 19
Beauty Box Video: Smoothing Controls Example of Skin Detail Amount Original photo Smoothing Amount, setting of 35 Good balance between smooth skin and image contrast. Please zoom in to view the results. Smoothing Amount, low settings Smoothing Amount, high settings Still blotchy, needs more smoothing. Loss of contrast in eyes, nose and mouth. 20
Beauty Box Video: Mask Group Mask Group This section covers the Mask group. These parameters are used when you are not satisfied with the automatic mask created by Beauty Box. Use the Mask controls to edit the mask that has been auto-created, or to create a completely new mask, or to import a mask created outside of Beauty Box. How It Works Creating a manual mask is very easy. In the Mode popup, select the Set Color option, then select the initial color. Next, switch the Mode to Add Color option and click to select additional areas on the face. Use the Color and Falloff controls to fine-tune the mask. Why use Mask controls? Use the Mask group for a couple of reasons. Sometimes you will not be satisfied with the auto-mask that Beauty Box creates and want to improve upon it. Or you may already have an alpha matte in the footage that you want to use. Perhaps you want to use After Effects keying features to create a better mask. Show Mask popup First, it s good to know how to see the mask. Show Mask does exactly what it sounds like. It displays a grayscale rendering of the mask that Beauty Box uses. Your footage displays by default, and there are two mask views to choose from. Off mode (default) Show Mask> Off The Off option is chosen by default. This means that Beauty Box displays your footage, which is typically what you will want to see. 21
Beauty Box Video: Mask Group Show Mask> Quick Like most Quick Mask modes, this option shows a rougher version of your mask. Quick generates a faster display than choosing On. Quick mode Quick Mask mode creates its mask based on the colors of the original footage. No smoothing is factored in. Color is looked at, then the mask is created. Show Mask> On On mode does the same thing as Quick mode, and then some. On creates its mask based on the colors of the original footage, then takes into consideration the smoothing settings, and the mask is changed somewhat by those settings. Color is looked at, then smoothing is looked at, then the mask is created. The higher the Smoothing Amount and Smoothing Radius, the more the On mode mask is affected. Preserve Edges will have an effect as well. Here is how the mask coloration works: On mode 100% white = Exact amount of smoothing. 100% black = No smoothing applied. Shades of gray = Percentage of smoothing applied. Dark gray applies less smoothing. Light gray applies more smoothing. 22
Beauty Box Video: Mask Group Using Quick vs On Why use Quick or On mode? Being able to view the mask can be critical. Lets say you want to edit the mask in Add Color mode and add the model s cheeks to the composite. You will want to be able to see an accurate version of the mask, and that is what On mode is for. In contrast, Quick mode is a faster display because the smoothing isn t applied to its mask display. Quick just shows you the mask that s created due to the selected color range. On mode is a bit slower because it processes the mask to more accurately display it. It is possible that you would use Beauty Box to render out a traveling matte for use with other effects. In this case, keeping the mode set to Quick or On will make the footage render in grayscale. Neither option has any effect on your final render. Quickstart for a custom mask Creating your own Beauty Box mask is quite easy. 1- In the Mode popup, select the Set Color option to specify the initial color value for your mask. 2- Now click on a portion of the subject s face that has a medium skin tone value you want to smooth. This click changes both Dark Color and Light Color to the same value. 3- Next, switch the Mode to the Add Color option. This will allow you to expand the color range that creates the mask. 4- Click around your footage frame again to select the darker and lighter skin tones. Doing so changes the Dark Color and Light Color to different values. 5- You can use the Falloff controls to fine-tune the mask. Beauty Box works in HSV color space, so you are adjusting the mask around Hue (H), Saturation (S) and Value (V). The Falloff sliders let you swap up lighter and darker areas of the mask. You re finished! See the following pages for more details (and screenshots) regarding the Mode and Falloff tools. 23
Beauty Box Video: Mask Group Mode popup Beauty Box automatically sets a mask for you by deciding behind the scenes how the smoothing gets distributed. If the mask is not to your liking, you can manually create the mask. The Mode popup is a crucial area for setting up your mask. There are three options: Off, Set Color and Add Color. With Set Color and Add Color, you can click on the Mask or the Image and it will sample the image. So you can view the mask, click on the mask areas and you won t sample black or white. You will instead sample the skin tones that the mask areas refer to. Mode> Off The Off option is chosen by default. This keeps Beauty Box running in auto-mask mode. Choose the other options to activate the custom mask controls. Mode> Set Color The Set Color option specifies the initial color point. Just click on a portion of the face you want to smooth. This changes both Dark Color and Light Color to the same value. When setting the initial color, it s usually best to find a color on the face that is fairly average, like a medium skin tone. Not too dark or too light. Usually an area on the cheek or forehead works well. You can expand the color range using the Add Color option, so when using Set Color, don t worry about getting a perfect mask immediately. the Set Color point 24
Beauty Box Video: Mask Group Mode> Add Color Add Color expands the mask color range. This allows you to work with and expand the custom mask. With this option selected, click on the facial region multiple times to select areas that aren t completely white. Anything you click on will expand the skin tones that are masked off. If you select a medium skin tone with Set Color, then Add Color works very well at expanding the color range to lighter and darker skin colors. You can use this tool to smooth skin that s affected by highlights and shadows. Add Color points Dark Color, Light Color These two color wells are used by the Mode> Set Color and Mode> Add Color options. Use Set Color to determine the initial color and Add Color to expand the color range. IMPORTANT NOTE: These color wells work differently than in most software. You do NOT click the eydropper icon to sample colors OR click the color swatch to bring up a color picker. Instead, the color wells will populate as you click and sample your footage colors. 25
Beauty Box Video: Mask Group Look at Mode through Mask view You can view the Mode tools and results in either regular mode or Mask mode. The screenshots below show a Mask view of our Set Color and Add Color results from the previous pages. the Set Color point Add Color points 26
Beauty Box Video: Mask Group About the Falloff Controls Use the Fallout controls to perfect your mask. If you have lighter areas in parts of the mask that you d prefer be dark or vise versa, adjusting the Fallout will let you tweak the mask more to your liking. Beauty Box works in HSV color space, so you are adjusting the range around two colors in each channel. You are adjusting the Hue (H), Saturation (S) and Value (V). For all three Falloff controls, you ll see the difference more when the grayscale mask is showing because these affect the HSV of the mask. You will see the effects in Show Mask> Off mode. They are typically subtle but be assured, they are working hard. Usually Beauty Box does a pretty good job of automatically selecting the values for the Falloff parameters. Tweaking the settings can bring some incremental benefits, but it s unlikely you ll see amazing changes. Improvements in one part of the image are typically offset with other areas degrading. Hue Falloff Hue Falloff sets the shade distribution of the grayscale mask. Value range is 0-100, measured in percentage. Lower values make lighter shades of gray and add in more white to the mask. Higher values make darker shades of gray and add in more black. There is no default value because Beauty Box sets the Hue Falloff according to how it detects the footage. Hue Falloff at 5 27 Hue Falloff at 19, which Beauty Box set the value to on Analyze Frame. Hue Falloff at 90
Beauty Box Video: Mask Group Saturation Falloff Saturation Falloff sets the contrast of the grayscale mask. Value range is 0-100, measured in percentage. Higher values create less contrast between the dark and light values, which lightens the mask overall. There is no default value because Beauty Box sets the Saturation Falloff according to how it detects the footage. Saturation Falloff at 5 Saturation Falloff at 21, which Beauty Saturation Falloff at 90 Box set the value to on Analyze Frame. Value Falloff Value Falloff affects the brightness of the grayscale mask. Value range is 0-100, measured in percentage. Higher values make the image brighter, which lightens the mask while keeping contrast. There is no default value because Beauty Box sets the Value Falloff according to how it detects the footage. Value Falloff at 5 28 Value Falloff at 21, which Beauty Box set the value to on Analyze Frame. Value Falloff at 90
Beauty Box Video: Mask Group Mask Input popup The Mask Input popup uses a layer in your Timeline as the mask that controls the Beauty Box effect. Mask Input recognizes any grayscale image as the mask. This choice causes the mask that Beauty Box generates automatically to be completely ignored. When a layer is chosen as the Mask Input, most controls in the Mask section will be disabled. The exception is the Show Mask popup. You can use media in the Timeline that your host application will recognize as a mask. For instance, a QuickTime movie, Photoshop graphic or After Effects precomp. You can also use a layer path as the mask, as seen in the Mask> Path popup. In this example, Mask Input recognizes a pre-comp that has a white circular mask on a solid layer. We could also use an imported bitmap image. NOTE: Set Mask Channel to Luminance In order for the Mask Input to work, there is one technical step you need to take. You need to set the Mask Channel popup to Luminance. By default, the Mask Channel popup is set to Alpha. This will use the alpha channel of the Mask Input layer as the Beauty Box mask. It s the same as if you were using the Alpha Matte option when dealing with Track Mattes. If the footage used as the Mask Input layer does not have an alpha channel, then Beauty Box will see the mask as completely black... and the effect will essentially be turned off. If you want to use the grayscale (luminance) values of the footage, you will need to set Mask Channel to Luminance. This works the same as the Luma Matte option for Track Mattes. The Alpha Channel is ignored in this case. Alpha is the default setting for Mask Channel. Change to Luminance for Mask Input to work. 29
Beauty Box Video: Mask Group Path popup The Path popup uses a layer path as a garbage matte. A garbage matte is a quickly or crudely drawn mask that is used to exclude parts of the source image. Any path applied to the Beauty Box layer can be used as a garbage matte. The path is used in addition to the regular Beauty Box mask. Unlike using the Mask Input popup, the Beuaty Box mask is not ignored but instead is augmented. (This could be the internal mask created by Beauty Box or an external mask via the Mask Input popup). Black and white areas When a path is active, the dark and light areas of the mask will still affect how Beauty Box is applied, but only within the bounds of the path. The path is essentially cropping the mask. If you want the path to fully control Beauty Box, then the mask needs to be pure white. You can do this by adjusting the Falloff values or Path use a precomp applied that has a white solid in it. Any animation that is applied to the mask will also show up in Beauty Box. If you have animated the path points or position, each frame will reflect that. NOTE: Set Timeline Mask mode to None In order for the Path popup to work, there is one technical step you may need to take. If you create a closed path (like a circle), in the application Timeline, set the Mask mode popup to None. This layer path adds a second mask to the subject s face. 30
Beauty Box Video: Mask Group By default, the Mask mode is set to Add, which will cause the whole layer to be cropped by the closed path. You will only see the part of the layer that s within the path, and all other portions of the layer will be rendered transparent. Setting the Mask Mode to None will tell After Effects to ignore the path and the entire layer will be revealed. However, when you set the Path pop-up within Beauty Box, it will be used to control where the effect is applied. Closed layer path with Mask mode Add. Closed layer path with Mask mode None. Feather Feather applies a blur to the edges of the path specified in the Path popup. Feather softens the edge of the mask so the transition from the inside to outside of the mask does not look obvious. Beauty Box s Feather operates similar to the Feather parameter in the Timeline s Mask section for the layer. By default, this parameter is grayed out. It becomes active and selectable when a path is chosen in the Path popup. Default value is 0%. Value range is 0-100, measured in percentage. If the path is not feathered, frequently a seam can be seen where the mask edge is. The downside of using Feather is that the Beauty Box effect may appear to fade off where the feathering starts. Usually this is not a noticeable ommission, but it can be. Feather of 40. 31
Beauty Box Video: Mask Group Invert checkbox Normally, the image is only affected in the region that is inside the Beauty Box mask. The Invert checkbox inverts the Mask and the area it affects. The image is affected in the area that would normally be considered outside the mask, while the inside area is not affected. By default, this parameter is grayed out. It becomes active and selectable when a path is chosen in the Path popup. 32
Beauty Box Video: Fine Detail Controls Fine Detail Controls This section covers the two separate groups of controls: Sharpen and Preserve. Each set provides a function that fine-tunes the details of the Beauty Box results. Sharpen> Use Mask checkbox If this checkbox is selected, Sharpen is only applied to the region specified by the mask. Usually you want Use Mask deselected so sharpening is applied to the whole image. Most of the masks created by the automatic processing will slightly affect areas that aren t skin tones. By applying a small amount of sharpening, you can bring back the details in areas that were only partially affected. It also makes sure that the sharpening is consistent across the image. Sharpen> Amount Controls how much sharpening is applied to the image. Default value is 0%. Value range is 0-100, measured in percentage. Between 0-25 tends to be the useful range. Above 25 (and frequently lower than 25) the image starts to get oversharpened, producing noise and artifacts that make the image look worse. Between 10-15 is usually a good range will give you an extra boost, but not create too much noise. 33
Beauty Box Video: Fine Detail Controls Preserve>Preserve Edges Preserve Edges is designed to keep significant details of the image. These are typically details that were sharp already or form major edges. For instance, areas like the nose, mouth and smile lines or text in a sign behind your subject. These are important details that should not typically be smoothed out. Default value is 100%, which is fully turned on. Value range is 0-100, measured in percentage. Preserve Edges is usually beneficial to have on. However, if you re seeing increased sharpening in wrinkles, especially around the eyes, you may want to turn it off. The downside to Preserve Edges is that it may add sharpenness and contrast to details that you d like smoothed out, like wrinkles around the eye. As with most of the parameters in Beauty Box, the setting is somewhat subjective. Its sweet spot will depend on the image and your judgement. Preserve> Preserve Grain Preserve Grain adds film grain to the image after smoothing. Default value is 0%, which is fully turned off. Value range is 0-100, measured in percentage. Because we are smoothing out part -- though not all -- of the image the smoothed out areas will potentially have less noise than the non-smoothed areas. Beauty Box tries to match the natural grain of the footage and typically does a good job. Therefore, most of the time you won t need this option. The grain is synthetic, meaning we are not sampling grain from film stock. Each film has its own noise signature and it s best to match that when possible. If you have a grain filter that has offers a preset for your specific type of grain, we recommend that you turn off Preserve Grain in Beauty Box (set it to 0%) and apply that other filter. 34