Hi, where in the World are freckles on fresh, young looking faces a "crime"?? Yet - nearly every Sample used to portrait what this Software can "magically" do.. obsesses with removing that particular feature from skins of even children (!??) - resulting in ghoast-like looking, pale creatures, where nothing glows or sparkles any longer, no natural highlights, no crisp lines - where after "smoothing", or "blurring" - something ought to stay to look at least believable?!

So - yes, one Filter (..that part of the name of this and other Products of the same Developer seems to be correct) - not at all magic, and worse - being sold as-a-program.

Words like "professional", or "intuitive" describing this tool to quote: beautify your portrait photo - are very misleading, sorry. This Software might be only useful as a special Effect.. around Halloween time??

Excellent! With this nice app, we all get to see even more skin. Probably much more than the geeks here are used to seeing. Thanks, GAOTD!

As of this moment only 12 comments; #6 positive. Perhaps #5 is too unless it's sarcastic. So that leaves at least 10 negative.

How can so many readers vote "thumbs-up" (143), compared to 297 "thumbs-down," based on the comments made above? Are there those who've nothing better to do than stuff the ballot box? Did they even bother to read the reviews? Makes no sense at all!

Funny how all those sample pictures look better in their 'before'-version.

The "before" pictures are BETTER in every example. This program removes freckles, blurs the eyebrows, makes lips washed out, and makes the teeth grey. I'd pay to NOT have this software.

I love this Developer's previous offering Magic Collage. But Magic Skin Filter produces an unnatural result. I will stick with Perfect365, which was also offered on GOATD, because it works so-o-o much better.

Thank you PixelApps and GOATD...today's software does deserve an 'E' for effort.

I find it interesting that all the examples on the website are redheads.

I'm thinking the author of this software is a redhead who is not comfortable with his/her freckles.

It would seem the author thinks that, to "beautify" someone, you have to blur their portrait and reduce the "red" spectrum, to remove/hide their freckles.

I disagree.
But... discuss amongst yourselves...

Cheers

On all the sample photos provided, notice that the eyes are softened in addition to the skin. That alone would make this not acceptable to me.

If you can not select an area for filtering and amount of blurriness, there is no point using it on the whole picture.
My experiment was on my grand ma picture, after the application, she looked like that a very thick night cream was applied and she did not look like herself.
Uninstalled it.

i installed this 2 times on my windows 8 with different settings.. but something block the way. i cannot start the program and i'm so disappointed coz i canot open the user interface at all. something need to be fixed here.. nowhere to run coz its 2013 already..

Won't open in Windows 8

All the "before" pictures look better than all of the "after" pictures. Why the heck would anyone want something that ruins the exposure and then blurs your pictures?
This software just sucks, even for free.

If you want to work on someone's skin in an image, Google on "image editing frequency separation" -- I get 3 million+ hits, so while the technique may be *newish*, there's no shortage of info, tutorials, individual methods & so on. What Frequency Separation does or means is separating the skin texture from the color so both can be worked on [touched up, edited] individually -- no more watching people try to clean their glasses after looking at a portrait image you've *fixed*. :)

Here are a few links as examples, the 1st for Paintshop Pro, 3 for the GIMP, & one from Adobe for P/Shop...
http://forum.corel.com/EN/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=48518
http://gimpedtutorials.com/index.php/retouching-skin-using-gimp-gimp-for-photographers/
http://blog.patdavid.net/2011/12/getting-around-in-gimp-skin-retouching.html
http://forum.meetthegimp.org/index.php?topic=1115.0
http://blogs.adobe.com/richardcurtis/?p=570

Have fun. :)

Thanks to GOTD + PixelApp Studio.


In photography, there are specialised soft portrait lenses such as Rodenstock Imagon.
Canon did make a special 135mm soft focus AF lens.
There are filters you can use for soft focus in varying degrees of softness.
Among the best in the world are Carl Zeiss T* Softar filters.
I have used these Softar filters.
The effect is stunning.

Would like to see Magic Landscape Filter 1.1 offered by this same company. Or are there some better free alternatives available?

Does its dirty job pretty well, but isn't it true that the freeware "Cosmetic Guide" does absolutely the same and even more for FREE??

http://tintguide.com/cosmetic.html

And for a more comprehensive and more professional photo editor solution (it's also PORTABLE):

http://hornil.com/en/products/stylepix/Features.html

Or better yet:
http://www.jpchacha.com/chasysdraw/index.php
http://www.getpaint.net

So charging 20 $ for an app like this doesn't make sense to me!!

My 2 cents....

I also prefer the 'Before' photos. Why would you want to blur these beautiful young complexions? Mystery to me. Pass.

Well Being that in the last 3 months I have compiled a whole list of Photo softwares Given away I think I will pass on this one as well. Thanks GOTD and Pixelapp for todays download.

December 5, 2012 Ashampoo Photo Commander 9
December 7, 2012 PhotoMagic for Windows
December 11, 2012 Simply Good Pictures 2
December 22, 2012 Perfect365 Standard
January 3, 2013 Retouch Pilot 3.5.3
January 14, 2013 AcroPano Photo Stitcher 2.1.4
January 12, 2013 TwistedBrush Pro Studio 17
January 9, 2013 Inpaint 4.7
January 8, 2013 Tilt Shift Generator
January 23, 2013 Photo Toolbox 1.12.3.1
January 20, 2013 Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 4
February 16, 2013 Photo+
March 4, 2013 Photo Retoucher 1.3

Today!! Magic Skin Filter 1.1

Magic Skin Filter August 21, 2011

I have been comming here for quite a few years and one thing I have never seen given away here is some kind of software to program games or something similar to that. how about getting something new like that.

Also with me the software did a system-Crash!
And the registration-procedure seems to use this application as a "one-way-product"....

Oh joy, this coud be good alernative to Photshop and can will help improve my compelxion too. Thank

InPaint can do that too. And it's very well known and PROVEN software. Did I mention it's FREE?

These look very stupid blur. I hate that effect.

If, in the sixties, you had a David Hamilton poster on your wall, all this blurred skin might make you feel nostalgic, otherwise, if the mere idea of opening a photo editor scares you but you and your family, friends etc. can do with a little embellishment in 2 seconds (keeping settings at a reasonable level) you might consider downloading this.

One issue: I assume “skin recognition” means it can make the difference between what is skin and what is not. Still, when I tried the program on a picture of myself, it brightened and blurred the background as well, including grass and trees, even though, take my word, my skin has a rather different color, as I am not from Mars.

As a professional photographer, this is among the worse attempts at "skin smoothing" I have ever seen. It looks like the program attempts to recreate the 70s technique of applying vaseline to the lens for adding a "glow" to the skin.

Better results can be had from any number of plug-ins for Photoshop - such as Imagenomic's Portraiture ($199) or OnOne's Perfect Portrait ($149) both are professional grade software - or with a very small amount of skill in just a few seconds using the tools built into PS or any number of photo editors.

Definitely a pass.

Am I the only one preferring the original pictures? Sorry but the effect is a real disaster on the pictures.

I found the application slow. It takes quite a bit to load and then process an image-- more than Photoshop CS6. Once loaded, the application is very spartan. It's default setting arbitrarily adds brightness-- not needed on a properly exposed photo. The default entries for "Amount" and "Strength" seem to work to some extent. Reducing the Amount and increasing the Strength seemed to produce a better result. Very slow to process and save the altered image. I posted some side-by-side split comparisons here.

Perfect 365 the all time free alternative...

http://perfect365.en.softonic.com/

I've used this from previous giveaways and really love it. I'm not too handy with complicated photo editing programs. Honestly I'm not even good with simpler ones. Yet I find this program to be really easy to use and have utilized it to quickly fix up close up head shots to smooth out skin, removing unevenness and blemishes. I lost the program when I set up a new system and am excited to have it come up again at GOTD. Love it!

A very basic little program to keep your children busy on a rainy day.
hendrik

Another single-function and not very useful editor, which would be more efficient as a plugin.

Can open 16-bit tiff and png (but not cr2). It doesn't list tiff files in 'add picture' dialog.

I wasn't able to find any description of the four settings (not that it is really needed) or a way to restore default settings (which come back after restart and are exaggerated anyway). Saves only to jpg with no quality control.

With taskbar on left, the program doesn't maximize correctly (win7/64). Only tested on one computer, but looks like a bug.

This program was last updated April 2009 :-(

Dealing with Photographers as I do (some pro) I must ask the question, based upon the samples provided on the website... Is all this do is add a layer of blur the image? Far overpriced, for severe limited functionality. Not even the right approach to go at this. Thumbs not only down...but buried! My vote: PASS

Pros
*Allows for easy one-click “beautification”, with little to no input needed from the user
*Changes to images are previewed in real-time in the program, so you can see exactly what you will get after outputting
*Supports batch processing
*Supports JPG/JPEG, PNG, GIF, and BMP inputs

Cons
*Produces "unnatural" outputs
*Only JPG outputs
*No Help file

Final Verdict
Click here for final verdict and full review