AFTER EFFECTS PLUGIN · SKIN
ASheng
Skin
Retouching
that looks untouched.
Detects the face automatically, smooths while keeping edges, softens lines, removes blemishes and evens skin tone; eyes, brows, lips and teeth are never smoothed away, and pore texture can stay. Forehead lines, under-eye lines, tear troughs and nasolabial folds adjust separately, with fill light, de-shine and lip refinement too. Video frames reference their neighbors so the face never flickers.
15 USD · 365-day license · 1 Mac
Output is watermarked until a license is activated. The license runs from the time of purchase and does not auto-renew; buy another to keep using it after it expires. The Golden Pass already includes Skin. Prices follow the live plan on the purchase page.
Edge-preserving smoothing
It smooths away blemishes and unevenness,
not the face.
Smoothing strength and radius are set separately, and edges (contours, features, hair strands) never blur with them. “Texture Recovery” puts pore detail back; at 100% every pore stays and only blemishes and uneven tone fade. Softening lines, blemish removal and even tone each get a slider. “Style” offers Light, Natural, Clean, Refined and Flawless — pick one, then fine-tune.
Targeted wrinkle removal
Four areas,
one slider each.
Forehead lines (including between the brows), under-eye lines (including crow’s feet and bags), tear troughs, nasolabial folds. It needs to know where the forehead and under-eye are, so face detection is required; switch “View” to “Wrinkle Zones” to see the areas it changes.
Lighting
Add a little light,
take away the shine.
Reduce dark circles, add fill light, remove shine. Fill light can come from the left, front or right (as seen in the frame). All three affect only the face; the background stays as it is.
Lips
Lip lines, lip color,
corners, lipstick.
Soften lip lines, adjust lip color, lighten the shadows at the corners, or apply a lipstick color of your choice. Teeth and the inside of the mouth are untouched while talking.
Automatic face detection
It knows
what not to touch.
Face detection uses macOS’s built-in Apple Vision, computed on your Mac with no footage uploaded. Detected eyes, brows, lips and teeth are protected; when no face is detected it falls back to skin-color detection alone.
Eyes, brows, lips and teeth are protected automatically. “Protect Features” sets the strength and “Protection Threshold” decides how much detail counts as a feature to keep.
Face only by default: neck, hair and background stay as they are. Untick it to treat skin across the whole frame.
Detection: automatic skin tone, picked skin tone (one click with the eyedropper), or whole frame. Tone range and edge softness are set separately.
“View” switches to the skin mask, feature-protection zones and wrinkle zones, so you can confirm the areas before switching back to the result.
Video anti-flicker
Retouched frame by frame,
the face must not flicker.
Smoothing each frame on its own lets blemish position and strength jump from frame to frame, which reads as flicker. Skin’s “Video Anti-flicker” references neighboring frames so the retouched face stays steady in motion. Noisy live footage needs it most.
“Video Anti-flicker” has three levels: Off, Standard (1 frame each side), Strong (2 frames each side). Go stronger when the footage is noisy and blemishes tend to jump.
Face position and feature regions are averaged with neighboring frames as well, so the protection zones don’t jitter.
What’s different
Retouching portraits —
Skin wants to cost you less time.
| What you want | The usual way | ASheng Skin |
|---|---|---|
| Smoothing without blurring the face | Blur everything, then mask by hand | Edge-preserving smoothing + automatic skin mask, features protected automatically |
| Keeping pore texture | Set up frequency separation separately | One “Texture Recovery” slider |
| Forehead, under-eye, nasolabial lines | Patch by hand frame by frame | One slider per area, located automatically |
| Flickering video | Track masks frame by frame and patch by hand | References neighboring frames and averages the feature positions |
| Fill light, de-shine, lips | Stack adjustment layers and paint masks | All in one plugin, with fill light from left, front or right |
| Render speed | All CPU rendering | Computed on the Apple Silicon GPU (Metal), falling back to CPU with identical results |
Getting started
Three steps to get going.
Requires an Apple Silicon (M series) Mac, macOS 14 or later, and After Effects 2026 or Premiere Pro 2026. The Premiere Pro version is GPU-accelerated end to end and lacks “Lipstick” and the “Preset Library”; everything else matches the After Effects version. No Intel Mac or Windows version.
- Download the installer
Click “Download for Mac” on this page and unzip. The installer is notarized by Apple.
- Quit AE, then install
Save your project, quit After Effects, Premiere Pro and Media Encoder fully with Cmd+Q, then run the installer.
- Add it to the portrait layer
Reopen After Effects or Premiere Pro, find ASheng_Skin under “Effect → ASheng - Portrait”, add it to a portrait photo or video, set “Style” to “Natural” first, then fine-tune as needed.
Good to know
Will it make the skin look plastic?
Not necessarily. “Texture Recovery” puts pore detail back, and at 100% every pore stays; when smoothing heavily, “Add Grain” restores some grain. The strength is entirely yours.
What if no face is detected?
It falls back to skin-color detection and can still smooth. Wrinkle removal, lighting and lips need a detected face to work. Face detection runs on your Mac with Apple Vision; no footage is uploaded.
Can I retouch only the face?
Yes, face only is the default: neck, hair and background stay as they are. To treat skin across the whole frame, untick “Face Only”.
Does the Golden Pass cover it?
Yes. The Golden Pass covers every ASheng AE plugin, including future releases, so Skin activates directly.
Which bit depths are supported?
8-, 16- and 32-bit are all supported.
Does it use the GPU?
Yes. It computes on the Apple Silicon GPU (Metal); when the GPU is unavailable it falls back to the CPU with the same result, only slower.
Can I use it without a license?
Yes, you can try it with a watermark on the output. With a valid Skin license NFT or Golden Pass, click “Activate / Manage License” in the “License” group of the effect panel to activate.
Who is the person in the demo videos?
The demo portrait footage was generated with Gemini; it is not a real person. The frames are actual ASheng Skin renders, left and right in sync, with no further post work.