Fast Electronic Makeup Artist

The Fast EMA plugin does high speed skin smoothing.


Click for examples.

There are some plugins out there that compete with my original Electronic Makeup Artist. They do a good job, but the render times can be horrendous. I thought the best way to improve EMA would be to re-write it so it would be as fast as possible. In most post production environments, time is money and minutes saved mean going home that much sooner. In my initial testing, these are the render times I'm getting:

    For one minute of 30fps 1080P ProRes 4444 - Original EMA: 18 minutes, Fast EMA: 8 minutes, competition: 4 hours

The Fast EMA plugin, much like the original Electronic Makeup Artist, does selective smoothing of skin tones while using edge detection techniques to maintain enough detail to avoid an overly blurry, "vaseline lens" look.

Although the fast EMA plugin is not as flexible as the original EMA, it is easier to use. This simplicity translates into increased speed both in workflow and processing and means it is generally about 2 to 3 times faster than EMA and 30 times faster than the competition.

    Cameras do not see as the human eye does. High definition and harsh lighting can add unwanted skin detail. Quarter million dollar studio cameras have built in circuits to correct this. Now you too can have that power in your post production workflow.

    Clicking on the thumbnail above will open a larger image. Clicking on the larger image will toggle between before and after.

    You can take a look at the instructions in a separate window.
    The filter can be found under the Effects/Video Filters/Sheffield Softworks/ menu.