⚡️PowerSkin Manual

Natural skin smoothing and blemish reduction for Final Cut Pro.

Installation

  1. Double-click PowerSkin-1.0.pkg and follow the installer (administrator password required).
  2. The installer places the PowerSkin app in Applications and the effect template in your Movies › Motion Templates folder, then opens PowerSkin once. That starts your free 7-day trial with every feature unlocked.
  3. Restart Final Cut Pro if it was running.

The effect appears in the Effects browser under ⚡️PowerApps → Effects → PowerSkin.

Effect not showing? Quit Final Cut Pro fully (⌘Q) and reopen it. FCP only scans for new effects at launch.

Requirements

Quick start

  1. Apply PowerSkin to your clip from Effects → ⚡️PowerApps → Effects.
  2. Let Auto Skin find the skin. It is on by default: PowerSkin measures the skin color inside the detected face on every frame and limits itself to it, with no mask to add. Tick Show Skin Mask once to see the coverage (warm white where the effect applies), then untick it. If the face is lit an unusual color, press Sample Skin Color once. If hair or eyes get in, lower Saturation Range or Brightness Range. Prefer Final Cut's own masking? Untick Auto Skin and add an Auto Mask → Skin; PowerSkin then processes whatever the mask lets through.
    Want pixel-perfect edges? Add Final Cut's Auto Mask → Skin on top (FCP 12.3+). Both masks combine. Auto Mask costs playback performance, so use it only when you need it.
  3. Dial it in, or let PowerSkin do it. Press Auto Fix and PowerSkin analyzes the shot's skin and sets Smoothing, Texture, Blemish Reduction, Redness and Skin Tone Correct to match what it measures (press again, Reset All, to return to defaults). Every value stays a normal slider you can tweak. Manually: raise Blemish Reduction for acne/spots, add Shadow Lift for dark circles, and use Skin Tone Correct for color casts (see below).
Tip. Check what you're removing: tick Show Removed Detail while adjusting. Only blemish-scale detail should appear in the difference view; if facial structure shows up, lower Smoothing or Blemish Size.

Perfect skin tones with Skin Check

Every healthy skin tone, all complexions, sits on the same hue line on a vectorscope (the “flesh line”). PowerSkin makes this foolproof:

  1. Tick Skin Check. The image turns gray; skin glows green when tones are correct and red when there's a color cast. A mini-vectorscope in the corner shows your skin's color cloud and the orange flesh line.
  2. Press Auto Skin Tone, PowerSkin measures the cast and sets the slider for you (press again to reset), or drag Skin Tone Correct yourself until the face is green and the cloud hugs the line.
  3. Untick Skin Check. Done: complexion is preserved; only the cast is removed.

Parameter reference

ParameterWhat it does
SmoothingOverall evening of skin: removes pore-scale texture (except what Texture keeps) and evens ordinary mid-scale unevenness, while facial structure is preserved. 0 removes nothing. Default 35 is subtle; 60+ is glam.
TextureHow much fine pore detail is kept. Higher = more real skin. Keep at 50–70 to avoid the plastic look.
Restore DetailsBrings pores and natural skin features back at full strength everywhere the blemish and discoloration detectors found nothing, so you can smooth harder without the waxy look. Blemishes and discolored patches stay removed. Not a sharpener: nothing is amplified beyond the original.
Blemish ReductionTargeted removal of acne, moles and spots. Detects outliers, so normal shading survives even at 100.
Blemish SizeThe size of imperfections being targeted. Raise for larger blemishes, lower for fine spots only.
Auto ScaleOn by default. Sizes the pore, blemish and structure bands from the detected face, so a subject who walks toward the camera keeps the same look with no keyframes, and a wide shot is not over-processed. With several people the largest face sets the scale. If no face is found, the bands fall back to a frame-size rule.
Detail ScaleA multiplier on the band sizes, 25 to 400 percent, keyframeable. Use it to trim Auto Scale, or as a manual distance control with Auto Scale off (hands, body shots, or a shot where detection blinks).
Redness ReductionPulls down localized redness (irritation, broken capillaries) without shifting overall skin tone.
Shadow LiftBrightens dark circles, eye bags and shadow-side wrinkles, and neutralizes their bluish cast. A built-in limit protects real facial structure. Try 30–60.
Tone EvennessUnifies patchy, uneven skin color toward the surrounding tone. Luminance is untouched.
WarmthA gentle warm/cool trim along the skin tone axis.
Skin Tone CorrectRotates skin hue onto the vectorscope flesh line: removes color casts while preserving complexion and saturation. 40–70 is the tasteful zone; 100 is a full snap.
Auto Skin ToneOne click measures the skin's color cast on the current frame and sets Skin Tone Correct to the right value (clean footage sets 0). Becomes Reset Skin Tone while a correction is active.
Auto FixAnalyzes the shot's skin (texture roughness, blemish density, redness and color cast) and sets Smoothing, Texture, Blemish Reduction, Redness and Skin Tone Correct in one click. Becomes Reset All, which restores those five to their defaults. Suggestions are conservative and always editable.
Auto SkinBuilt-in skin detection. On by default. PowerSkin classifies every pixel by how close its color sits to the vectorscope flesh line and confines the effect to skin, with no Final Cut mask. Untick to process the whole frame (for example under your own mask).
Hue RangeHow far a hue may sit from the skin center and still count as skin. Raise it if parts of the face drop out (check with Show Skin Mask); lower it if wood or beige walls get in.
Saturation RangeHow much more or less saturated than the center a pixel may be. Hair and irises are usually less saturated than face skin, so lowering this is the first move when they leak into the mask.
Brightness RangeThe brightness window around the skin center. Lower it to drop hair, irises and eye whites that share the skin's hue; raise it if forehead highlights or shadowed cheeks fall out.
Mask SoftnessBlends between a tight mask with clean edges and a soft one that follows the shape of the face. Default 50 suits most footage.
Skin Color / Sample Skin Color / Use Picked ColorThe center of the skin model. By default PowerSkin measures it on every frame from the skin inside the detected face, which absorbs moderate color casts by itself. For a shot where nothing looks like skin to the model (a face lit blue, a heavy grade), press Sample Skin Color: it averages the real color of the cheeks, nose and forehead on the current frame, writes it into Skin Color and ticks Use Picked Color, so the mask centers on that color. You can also set Skin Color by hand; clicking the swatch opens the macOS Colors panel, which has a magnifier eyedropper that samples anything on screen, including the viewer.
Limit to FacesRestricts the skin mask to detected faces (plus forehead, ears and neck). Uses Apple's on-device face detection at a few milliseconds per frame. If no face is found the whole frame stays eligible, so hands and body shots still work. Untick for shots where skin outside the face matters.
MixWet/dry blend with the original. 0 shows the untouched image.
Skin CheckThe green/red skin-tone verdict view with mini-vectorscope (see above). Preview only. Untick before export.
Show Removed DetailDifference view of what's being taken out. Preview only. Untick before export.
Show Skin MaskShows the Auto Skin coverage: warm white where the effect applies, dim elsewhere. Preview only. Untick before export.
Surgical fixes: apply PowerSkin twice: one instance with your general settings and Auto Skin on, and a second with only Shadow Lift raised, masked with small shape masks under the eyes.

Trial & License

When the trial ends, output is watermarked until you activate a license key. Your settings and timelines are untouched. Activating clears the watermark in place.

Activating

  1. Your license key arrives by email from Payhip after purchase.
  2. Open PowerSkin from Applications, paste the key, click Activate.
  3. Final Cut Pro picks up the change within seconds, no restart needed.

Updates

PowerSkin checks for updates automatically. When one is available, the app shows a Download Update button and the effect's inspector header reads UPDATE AVAILABLE. Run the downloaded installer over the old version. Settings and license are kept.

Troubleshooting

Sending a diagnostic log

If you write to support about a crash or hang, this log tells us exactly what Final Cut asked PowerSkin to do right before the problem. It contains frame sizes and timings only, no footage.

  1. Quit Final Cut Pro.
  2. Open Terminal (Applications > Utilities) and paste this line, then press Return: 
    mkdir -p ~/Library/Application\ Support/PowerSkin && touch ~/Library/Application\ Support/PowerSkin/debug-enable
  3. Open Final Cut Pro and reproduce the problem (for example add PowerSkin, then add the Auto Mask).
  4. In Finder choose Go > Go to Folder, paste ~/Library/Application Support/PowerSkin and attach the file debug.log to your email.
  5. If Final Cut showed a crash or "not responding" dialog, also open Console (Applications > Utilities), pick Crash Reports in the sidebar, and attach any entry named PowerSkin, PowerSkinXPC or Final Cut Pro from that time.
  6. When done, delete the debug-enable file so logging stops.

Uninstalling

The easy way

  1. Download the PowerSkin Uninstaller and unzip it.
  2. Right-click PowerSkin Uninstaller.command and choose Open (the right-click is needed the first time because the script isn't from the App Store), then confirm.
  3. Restart Final Cut Pro.

Manually

Delete these items, then restart Final Cut Pro:

Your license key itself stays valid either way. Reinstall and activate again whenever you like.