Sputnik Digital Graphics

VanityFilter

AI skin smoothing for video. One dial to camera-ready.

A complete commercial product, not just an app and not just a website. Sputnik Digital Graphics designed the interface, engineered the computer-vision pipeline, built the licensing and installer systems, and shipped the storefront that sells it.

Visit vanityfilter.com See the technology
VanityFilter desktop application showing an original and smoothed video frame side by side
Facial landmarks 478 points
Faces per frame Up to 5
Export codecs H.264 · ProRes 422 HQ
Processing 100% offline
Platform Windows 10 / 11
01 The software

A retouch artist that runs at 30 frames per second.

VanityFilter detects every face in a video, builds a feathered skin-only mask with eyes, brows, and lips protected, and smooths just that region with an edge-preserving filter, frame after frame, without the plastic look.

The interface is a full-bleed preview with a floating control rail: pick a preset or drag the sliders and the frame re-renders live. Strength, skin tolerance, feathering, and texture repair shape the smoothing; dedicated passes brighten skin, matte down shine, and even out redness. A master Amount dial scales the entire look from untouched to full effect in one move.

Around the core effect is real product engineering: a multi-frame preview browser with original, mask, processed, and split views; batch queues in both the GUI and CLI; savable user presets; and a Premiere Pro workflow that exports grayscale track mattes plus sidecar settings JSON for every render.

  • Face-aware skin masking
  • Live preview rendering
  • Brighten · shine · redness passes
  • Batch GUI + CLI processing
  • Premiere track-matte export
  • Offline license activation
VanityFilter adjustment panel with amount, strength, smoothing, and skin sliders over a split original and processed view

The preview browser lets an editor audit exactly what the pipeline sees: the source, the mask it built, the processed result, and a split comparison.

VanityFilter Original: Untouched source frame
Original Untouched source frame
VanityFilter Mask: Skin mask with protected eyes, brows, and lips
Mask Skin mask with protected eyes, brows, and lips
VanityFilter Processed: Smoothed result with texture preserved
Processed Smoothed result with texture preserved
VanityFilter Split: Before and after, side by side
Split Before and after, side by side

Every system on the stack.

Getting VanityFilter off the ground took six interlocking systems: vision research, desktop engineering, packaging, cryptography, commerce, and growth. All of it built in-house.

Sys 01

Computer vision & AI

The core of VanityFilter is a real-time face-aware imaging pipeline that decides, per pixel and per frame, what is skin and what must be protected.

  • MediaPipe Face Landmarker 478-point facial landmarks via the modern Tasks API, tracking up to 5 faces per frame
  • YuNet (ONNX) Fallback face detector that catches turned and profile faces MediaPipe misses
  • Selfie segmentation (TFLite) Multiclass person segmentation used as the skin gate for the mask
  • OpenCV Edge-preserving bilateral filtering, mask morphology, and all frame I/O
  • NumPy Vectorized per-pixel math across every frame of the video
Sys 02

Desktop application

A native-feeling Windows app with a full-bleed preview UI, live re-rendering on every slider move, and a scriptable CLI twin for batch work.

  • Python 3.11 Application core, processing pipeline, and tooling
  • PySide6 / Qt 6 Dark, icon-rail GUI with floating panels, preview browser, and live view modes
  • FFmpeg + ffprobe Single-pass export pipeline: H.264 MP4 (AAC) or ProRes 422 HQ MOV (PCM) with original audio
  • CLI + tqdm Full command-line interface with progress bars, presets, and multi-file batch processing
  • pytest Automated test suite over the I/O, masking, and smoothing modules
Sys 03

Packaging & distribution

One build script turns source into a distributable product: executable, installer, bundled FFmpeg, manual, and license notices.

  • PyInstaller Self-contained onedir build embedding version and publisher metadata
  • Inno Setup LZMA2-compressed Windows installer with Start Menu shortcut and uninstaller
  • Auto-update system Daily background check against a hosted latest.json with an in-app update banner
  • Generated user manual PDF manual rebuilt from source on every release
  • License compliance Bundled third-party notices: Qt LGPL, FFmpeg GPL with source offer, and ML model licenses
Sys 04

Security & licensing

Copy protection with zero activation servers: keys are cryptographically signed offline and verified locally, so the app never phones home.

  • Ed25519 signatures License keys signed with a private key and verified in-app with the bundled public key
  • Python cryptography Signature verification library powering the offline activation flow
  • Key vending workflow Per-customer key issuing tool with optional expiry, kept outside the shipped product
  • EULA + activation dialog End-user license surfaced in the installer and on first run
Sys 05

Website & commerce

vanityfilter.com is the product's storefront: demos, tutorials, checkout, license delivery, and support engineered as one system.

  • PHP + shared includes Component-driven pages with a shared head, nav, footer, and share rail
  • Hand-built CSS design system Custom dark UI with Sora, Instrument Sans, and JetBrains Mono. No frameworks.
  • PayPal checkout Full license and demo tiers, plus per-creator discount codes mapped to dedicated payment links
  • Payment webhook PayPal hook that ties completed checkouts into license fulfillment
  • Waitlist & support flows Email capture, contact, thank-you, and download delivery pages
Sys 06

Marketing, SEO & growth

The launch is engineered too: structured data for search, tutorial content for intent traffic, and automated creator outreach at scale.

  • Schema.org + SEO structure Structured data, canonical URLs, sitemap, robots, and llms.txt
  • Google Analytics 4 Event-level tracking on checkout and download actions
  • Tutorial blog Workflow guides for Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve targeting search intent
  • Demo video pipeline Adobe Premiere Pro demo edits, before/after galleries, and social-ready cuts
  • Outreach automation Node.js creator-discovery scripts for YouTube and X campaign targeting
02 The website

A storefront built to convert search into licenses.

vanityfilter.com is the product's launchpad: live before/after demos, preset galleries, a tutorial blog, and a checkout flow that goes from PayPal payment to activated license key.

The site runs on PHP with shared includes and a hand-built design system: no frameworks, fast loads, clean markup. Commerce is handled through PayPal payment links with per-creator discount codes for influencer campaigns, a payment webhook for fulfillment, and demo, full-license, and upgrade tiers. Structured data, a sitemap, and intent-targeted tutorials for Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve pull organic traffic, while GA4 tracks every buy click and download.

  • Product marketing site
  • PayPal checkout + webhook
  • Creator discount engine
  • Tutorial blog + SEO
  • Download + update delivery
  • Privacy + license pages
Explore the live site

Your product could be next.

VanityFilter went from concept to paying customers with one studio handling design, engineering, and launch. If you have a product that needs the same push, open a channel.

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