How to Retouch Each Person Separately in a Video, Not Every Face the Same

Key takeaways

• A single beauty setting applied to every face rarely suits everyone: skin, age, makeup, and how each person wants to look differ.
• Per-person retouching first identifies who appears in the clip, then lets you give each person their own settings.
• Repair a soft or noisy face before you retouch it; retouching a blurry face only makes a smooth blur.
• Keep it light and ask before you change how someone looks, especially their face shape.
• Classic editors can do it with one tracked mask per face; AI tools do the tracking for you.

Yes, you can retouch each person in a video differently. The tool first works out who appears across the clip, then lets you pick a person and set their own skin, makeup, and face settings, while the others keep theirs or stay untouched.

That fixes the usual group-shot problem, where the setting that suits one face makes another look waxy or made up. In this guide, you'll learn when per-person retouching matters, how to do it with AI or by hand, why blurry faces need repair first, and where to stop.

Contents

1. Why one setting doesn't fit every face
2. Which method should you choose?
3. Method 1: Retouch each person with AI
4. Method 2: Track a mask per face by hand
5. Repair blurry faces before you retouch
6. How to do it in KwaFlux
7. Common problems
8. Where to stop
9. FAQ

Why one setting doesn't fit every face

Per-person retouching means applying different beauty settings to different people in the same video, instead of one setting to every face. It matters whenever the people in a shot differ:

• Skin. One person has acne marks, another has fine lines, a third has nothing to fix. Strong smoothing that clears blemishes flattens skin that didn't need it.
• Makeup. Someone already wearing makeup looks overdone with added lipstick; someone bare-faced may want it.
• Age and style. A light, textured retouch suits an older interviewee; a brighter look may suit a host. Men and women often want different styles.
• Consent. Some people don't want to be retouched at all.

Typical cases are interviews with two guests, wedding and family videos, couple vlogs, group product demos, and livestream replays with a co-host.

Which method should you choose?

Method 1: Retouch each person with AI

The general flow, which KwaFlux follows (steps below):

1. Scan the clip. The tool finds the distinct people across the whole clip, not just one frame, so someone who turns away and back stays the same person.
2. Pick a person from a row of portraits.
3. Set their effects: skin, makeup, retouch style, features, and face shape.
4. Pick the next person and give them their own set. People you don't touch stay as they are.
5. Preview moments where they're together, then export.

Method 2: Track a mask per face by hand

In editors with masks and motion tracking, such as DaVinci Resolve, you can work face by face:

1. Draw a shape around the first face and track it through the shot.
2. Apply softening or color only inside that shape.
3. Repeat with a new layer or node for the next person.

DaVinci Resolve Studio's Face Refinement automates part of this, but it works on one face per node: you add a node per person, and its tracking can drop when a head turns to profile. Expect to fix tracks by hand on long clips.

Repair blurry faces before you retouch

Beauty effects are designed for faces that are reasonably sharp. On a soft, noisy, or heavily compressed face, smoothing removes what little texture is left and the result looks like plastic. So work in this order:

1. Repair the clip: denoise, sharpen, and restore facial detail.
2. Retouch the repaired clip.

Restoring a face isn't the same as retouching it. Restoration rebuilds detail lost to blur and compression, such as eyes, lashes, and lip edges; retouching then adjusts skin and makeup on that clearer face.

How to do it in KwaFlux

Step 1: Repair the clip if faces are soft. Import the video. If the quality check shows low Clarity or Cleanliness, open Quality Repair and apply Smart Repair, which restores faces automatically along with denoising and sharpening. Export it; the result is added as a new version under the source clip, and the original stays. Use that repaired version in the next step.

Step 2: Choose who to retouch. Open AI Beauty. Under Who to retouch, choose:

• All faces: no need to pick anyone; every face gets the settings below.
• Tune separately: KwaFlux scans the clip to identify who appears. Effects stay locked until the scan finishes.

Step 3: Pick a person. After the scan, each person appears as a portrait (Person 1, Person 2, …) with how many times they were seen. Tap a portrait: the preview jumps to a frame with that person, and the settings you set now belong only to them.

Step 4: Set their effects. Stack what that person needs:

Each effect has a strength slider. Issue-specific effects such as Remove Acne only change what's there: on a face without acne, little happens, and that's expected. For whiter, brighter skin, use the Radiant retouch style (brighter skin and more polished eyes) or Clear (clean, clear-looking skin), and add Foundation to even out the skin tone.

Step 5: Move to the next person. Tap another portrait to set their look. A marker shows who has a Custom look. Tap back any time to return to that person's set.

Step 6: Preview and export. Preview 1, 3, or 5 seconds where the people are together and compare. Several AI effects run per frame, so export takes longer with a big stack.

If the scan can't find a stable person, for example in very short clips or tiny faces, KwaFlux says so and applies the effects to every face. Try Scan again, or switch to All faces for one light, shared look.

Common problems

Where to stop

• Ask first. Retouching other people, especially face shape, changes how they're presented. Get their agreement, and don't retouch people in news, documentary, or evidence footage.
• Keep identity. Clear blemishes and tired eyes; don't make someone look like a different person.
• Lighter for some, none for others is often the most natural result. See AI beauty retouch styles.

Final thoughts

A group shot needs more than one beauty setting. Repair soft faces first, scan the clip, give each person only what they need, and leave anyone who'd rather not be retouched as they are. The natural result is several light touches, not one heavy one.

Give everyone in the shot their own look

KwaFlux's AI Beauty identifies the people in a video and retouches each one with their own settings on your own computer. Media files are not uploaded for processing. It runs on Windows 10 (64-bit, version 1809 or later), Windows 11, and macOS 12 or newer on Apple Silicon. Importing files and exploring the app need no account. Signing in with an active paid plan is required only to export, convert, repair a file, or download a file from a link.

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