FaceFilter Studio Review

Tricky one. There are essentially two parts to FaceFilter Studio. There's retouch and morphing. Retouch sometimes works OK. My biggest problem was that the auto commands were a little uncontrollable and usually too aggressive. Manual controls are all there but the interface is quite hard to use. The screen doesn't update as quickly as I'd like (I'm using a machine that has no problem with Photoshop CS2) and a lot of the effects are very subtle until you dial them right up.

I played for a few hours and was unable to produce a retouch that I was really happy with. It's likely that with more practise I could produce better results but the same is true of lots of editing packages. Since I'll need another editor to work on pictures that aren't human faces I would probably spend my time better using them to get great retouched portraits.

Morphing is fun. Is so cool to take a picture of somebody smiling and make them look angry. It's possible this could be really useful for group portraits where one person's expression can spoil the whole group. It's certain that you'd enjoy using this on a Friday afternoon in the office.

One thing to note is that the instructions suggest you use a picture where the person faces forward and is sharply defined, the expression should not be exaggerated and the mouth should be closed or with a small smile. I have a folder of face pictures that are model released (in case I need to change them into monkeys).

These are real world portraits that I have taken and none of them fit all these criteria. Results are OK but they work a lot better on the specially shot pictures on the samples disk than my own pictures. If course I could ask my model to look straight ahead with a relaxed expression and small smile with lips together. I could also just ask them to look angry and save the retouch.