User manual DIGITAL ANARCHY BEAUTY BOX PHOTO

[. . . ] Easily smooth skin tones in photographs. BEFORE AFTER Beauty Box for Photoshop & Photoshop Elements Digital Anarchy Smart tools for creative minds. www. digitalanarchy. com Beauty Box Photo: Table of Contents About Beauty Box Photo 1 1 1 1 Overview of Interface Main Controls group Auto-Mask button How It Works Show Mask button How It Works The simple, automatic workflow. Auto-Mask results vs Hand Masking 2 3 3 3 5 5 Smoothing Controls Manual Mask Group How It Works Resolution and Smoothing Smoothing Amount Example of Smoothing Amount What is the `best' range?Smoothing Amount & the Mask View of smoothing mask Smoothing Radius Setting the Radius value Pay attention to image contrast Skin Detail Amount Render time warning Texture vs smoothing Preserve Small Detail slider Example of Smoothing Amount & Radius Set Skin Color button How to choose the color Add Skin Color button Use with Show Mask button How it Works Use Show Mask button Hue Range Saturation Range Value Range Preserve Edges 6 13 13 13 13 13 14 14 14 15 15 16 6 6 6 7 8 8 8 9 9 9 11 11 11 11 12 Advanced Mask Group 14 Image Controls 16 © 2010, Digital Anarchy : Smart Tools for Creative Minds | Beauty Box Photo: Auto Skin Retouching Beauty Box Photo: Table of Contents When to use this slider Preserve Small Detail When to use this slider Sharpening Amount Use Mask for Sharpening checkbox When to use them Adjust Hue Adjust Saturation Adjust Brightness Use Mask for Color Correction checkbox Snapshot 1, 2, 3 Action buttons Save button View button, Load button View Original command Preset List Preset well Save Preset, Apply Preset `Make it Happen' buttons Reset button Cancel button OK button Use GPU checkbox When to turn off Use GPU Use GPU and nVidia/CUDA Preview Window Zoom In, Zoom Out Grabber Hand Contextual menu Zoom In, Zoom Out Reset Viewer Show Original Undo, Redo View Fullscreen You are experiencing crashes or render problems Preview Window displays `Render Failed' error 16 16 17 17 17 Color Correction Controls 18 18 18 19 19 19 20 20 20 20 20 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 22 22 22 22 22 23 23 23 23 23 23 24 24 Interface Controls 20 Troubleshooting section 24 © 2010, Digital Anarchy : Smart Tools for Creative Minds | Beauty Box Photo: Auto Skin Retouching Beauty Box Photo: Introduction About Beauty Box Photo Welcome to Beauty Box Photo, the next generation in skin retouching software!By using advanced techniques like face detection, we automatically identify and correct skin tones to make the process of skin retouching easier than ever. [. . . ] The Preserve Small Detail control is also helpful in preserving those texture details. Read more about the Preserve Detail control. 11 © 2010, Digital Anarchy : Smart Tools for Creative Minds | Beauty Box Photo: Auto Skin Retouching Beauty Box Photo: Smoothing Controls Example of Smoothing Amount & Radius NOTE: We list specific Smoothing settings in our examples. These settings may not produce the same result for your photographs depending on factors like the image resolution. Original photo Amount 30, Radius 18, Detail 30 Middle ranges give good balance between smooth skin and skin texture. Please zoom in to view the results. Amount 15, Radius 10, Detail 30 Low values keep the face blotchy, needs more smoothing. Amount 50, Radius 30, Detail 30 High values make the face a little too smooth, loses contrast, looks a bit fake. 12 © 2010, Digital Anarchy : Smart Tools for Creative Minds | Beauty Box Photo: Auto Skin Retouching Beauty Box Photo: Manual Mask Group Manual Mask Group The Manual Mask controls are used when you want to edit the automatic mask created by Beauty Box. Use the Set and Add buttons to add and expand the color range used to generate the smoothing mask. Set Skin Color button Creating a manual mask is very easy. That click selects the initial color on which you are basing the Beauty Box soothing mask. Next, use the Add Skin Color button to select additional areas on the face. How to choose the color When setting the initial color, it is usually best to find a color on the face that is fairly average, like a medium skin tone. You can expand the color range using the Add Skin Color button, so when using Set, don't worry about getting a perfect mask immediately. Add Skin Color button Add Skin Color expands the mask color range. With this option selected, click on the facial region multiple times to select areas that aren't completely white. If you select a medium skin tone with Set, then Add works very well at expanding the color range to lighter and darker skin colors. You can use this button to smooth skin that is affected by highlights and shadows. Use with Show Mask button With both Set and Add, you can click around the photo when it is in regular mode OR Show Mask mode. Keep in mind that when you are sampling the grayscale mask, you aren't really sampling the black, white or gray. You are instead sampling the skin tones that the mask areas refer to. 13 © 2010, Digital Anarchy : Smart Tools for Creative Minds | Beauty Box Photo: Auto Skin Retouching Beauty Box Photo: Advanced Mask Group Advanced Mask Group The Advanced Mask controls are used to perfect your mask. If you have lighter areas in parts of the mask that you'd prefer be dark or vise-versa, adjust the Range to tweak the mask more to your liking. How it Works Beauty Box works in HSV color space. With these sliders, you are adjusting the range around two colors in the Hue (H), Saturation (S) or Value (V) channel. 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. Use Show Mask button When using the Range controls, you will see the difference more when the Show Mask button is turned on and showing the grayscale mask. You will see the effects in regular mode (when Show Mask is off) but those effects are typically pretty subtle. Be assured, however, they are working hard. Hue Range Hue Range sets the shade distribution of the grayscale mask. Beauty Box sets the value according to how it detects the image, so there is no default setting. Higher values make lighter shades of gray and add in more white to the mask. Lower values make darker shades of gray and add in more black. Hue Range at 10. [. . . ] You will usually see a `Render Failed' error message or Beauty Box will just render the original image with no effect applied. Having many applications open may cause it, particularly if those applications are also trying to use the GPU. Use GPU and nVidia/CUDA If you have a nVidia video card, instead of `Use GPU' button you may see `Use GPU and CUDA'. Newer nVidia cards support a technology called CUDA which Beauty Box also takes advantage of. This is just another way of speeding up Beauty Box and it does so dramatically. [. . . ]