Photo editor allows you to put on a happy face

June 20, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

We’ve all taken bad snapshots at one time or another, especially when it comes to pictures of people.

There are the ones taken with someone’s eyes closed or with a bad facial expression. Unfortunately, not everyone is willing to say “cheese” when you press the button.

And though there are all sorts of photo-retouching products available to remove red eye and manipulate the images, none of them are actually designed to retouch facial expressions. Knowing this, Reallusion has created an amazing little program called FaceFilter Studio 2.

FaceFilter Studio 2 is a unique photo editor specifically designed to make faces more attractive. When I say attractive, I am referring to those facial expressions that tend to make an otherwise pretty face appear to be less appealing, such as frowns, scowls and other similar grimaces.

FaceFilter Studio 2 accomplishes the transformation from unattractive to beautiful by actually allowing you to manipulate the subject’s facial expression.

According to the company, they have developed a revolutionary muscle-based facial enhancement formula that was derived from the analysis of literally thousands of faces.

Using the supplied library of facial templates, you can make subtle facial changes by simply raising the corners of the mouth or opening the eyes wider, for example. By playing with all of these variables, you can turn a frown into a smile, make a face look younger, slimmer, or even more friendly.

Turn that scowl on your mother-in-law’s face into one of a kinder, gentler and more loving person. Or manipulate images of yourself so that you appear to be more intellectual, sexier and even more confident.

All of those appearances are available within the FaceFilter Studio 2 template library.

People using online dating services (both the date-or and the date-ee) could get in a lot of trouble using this.

To begin the conversion, you first bring the digital image into the FaceFilter Studio 2 editor. An easy-to-use four-step process lets you manipulate the facial image to your specifications beginning with the library of pre-made templates. Initially, the template attempts to normalize the facial image to provide what they call a balanced face. From there, you can apply a variety of features. Once the template has placed you on the right track, the editor lets you apply a variety of manual facial-feature adjustments. This is done by selecting from 10 different facial points. You can also modify the width and proportions of the head itself. Once the points are selected, you can change the position of those points. The facial image literally stretches or contracts depending on the direction of your movements. You can make a nose smaller, eyes bigger, enhance eyebrows and more.

Additional tools let you adjust skin color, remove pimples and other skin blemishes, eliminate wrinkles, reduce dark circles under the eyes and more.

Obviously, all of this requires a gentle touch, otherwise you will wind up with a caricature of the original image — which isn’t all that bad since creating a distorted image from a normal face turns out to actually be a touted feature of FaceFilter Studio 2.

Some of the examples I saw were hysterical. But the real value of FaceFilter Studio 2 is the ability to literally repair the damage a scowl makes upon what would otherwise be a really nice photograph.

Some pictures capture a moment in time that can never be repeated. Before FaceFilter Studio 2, you’d just have to throw away that precious memory. Now you have a chance to get most of them back.

FaceFilter Studio 2 works with Windows and sells for $59.95 as a download from the Reallusion website.

For more information, visit www.reallusion.com/facefilter.

Craig Crossman is a national newspaper columnist writing about computers and technology. For more information, visit his website at www.computeramerica.com.

2010 McClatchy Tribune