Beauty, Filters & LUTs: Grading Photos and Video in One App
2026-09-20
#Product Guide #beauty camera#photo filters#lut filters#video beauty#portrait retouch#color grading#watermark camera GPS Map Camera: Timestamp
Most camera apps treat colour as a sticker you paste on afterwards. TempoAI Camera treats it as part of the capture: a beauty tab for faces, a filter tab for the mood of the picture, and a LUT tab for the situation you are shooting in — all applied live in the viewfinder and baked into the photo or video when you press the shutter.
This guide explains what is inside each tab, how the presets are actually built, how the intensity slider behaves, and what happens when you combine a face treatment with a colour grade and a watermark in the same frame.
Quick answer: the filter strip has three tabs — Beauty (12 presets, including No Beauty), Filter (12 creative colour presets) and LUT (12 situational 3D looks for landscape, portrait, food, pets, plants, sun, cloud, rain, snow, sunset, night and morning). Beauty and colour are separate selections, so you can run a face treatment and a LUT at the same time, each with its own intensity. Intensity is remembered per preset, defaults to about 35%, and tops out just below full strength so that what you see in the preview is exactly what gets saved.
Three Tabs, Three Jobs
| Tab | What is inside | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Beauty | 12 face presets: No Beauty, Skin Refiner, Bright Glow, Face Contour, Natural Makeup, V-Shape, Pearl Teeth, plus Male, Female, Rosy, Fresh and Slim Face | People — smoothing, brightening, contouring and shaping, driven by face detection |
| Filter | 12 creative colour presets: Fresh, Warm Film, Cool, B&W, Cinematic, Vibrant, Fade, Vintage, Golden, Minty, Sepia, Velvet | The mood and look of the whole image |
| LUT | 12 situational looks: Landscape, Portrait, Food, Pet, Plant, Sunny, Cloudy, Rain, Snow, Sunset, Night, Morning | Matching the grade to the scene and the weather instead of guessing |
Because Beauty and colour are separate selections, a typical portrait setup is “Skin Refiner at 40% + Portrait LUT at 50%” — a face treatment and a grade, stacked in one shot.
Beauty: What Each Preset Actually Does
The beauty tab is not a row of blur filters. Behind the six treatment presets is a professional pipeline that works on the detected face:
| Preset | What it targets | How it is implemented |
|---|---|---|
| Skin Refiner | Skin texture while keeping edges sharp | Edge-preserving bilateral filtering inside the face region, so eyes, brows and hairlines stay crisp |
| Bright Glow | Skin tone brightness without a grey wash | Whitening performed in the CIELAB colour space rather than pushing RGB channels |
| Face Contour | Three-dimensional shaping of the face | Face-landmark triangulation with Phong-like lighting, instead of a hard-edged falloff |
| Natural Makeup | Cheeks and lips with a soft finish | Radial gradients combined with an overlay blend rather than solid fills |
| V-Shape | Jaw and cheek line | Gaussian-falloff displacement warping instead of a blunt stretch |
| Pearl Teeth | Teeth brightness | Probabilistic CIELAB detection instead of a simple luminance threshold |
The remaining presets — Male, Female, Rosy, Fresh and Slim Face — are style variants: each pairs face processing with its own tone curve, so you pick a look rather than a single parameter. Every beauty preset is also face-driven: the engine looks for a face first, then works inside it, which is why a landscape photo shows no beauty effect at all.
A useful detail for low-light or subtle work: the intensity curve boosts the low end, so even a small slider value gives a visible — but still natural — result.
Filter: Twelve Creative Presets Built on Real Grading
The creative presets are parameterised grades rather than coloured overlays. Each one stores a tone curve, optional per-channel curves, colour-balance shifts for shadows, midtones and highlights, a vibrance boost, and in some cases vignetting and film grain. That is why “Cinematic” and “Vintage” behave like looks you would build in an editor.
| Preset | Character | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Fresh | Clean, slightly lifted | Everyday shots, daylight, food |
| Warm Film | Warm, softened film feel | Portraits, interiors, family photos |
| Cool | Cool blue cast | Snow, architecture, night |
| B&W | Monochrome | Documentation, street, dramatic light |
| Cinematic | Filmic contrast with teal-orange balance | Travel, video, storytelling |
| Vibrant | Punchy colour | Markets, festivals, outdoor scenes |
| Fade | Matte blacks, low contrast | Soft portraits, minimal scenes |
| Vintage | Retro tint and grain | Nostalgic looks, props, interiors |
| Golden | Warm highlight glow | Sunset, skin tones, golden hour |
| Minty | Cool green accent | Nature, plants, fresh food |
| Sepia | Classic brown tone | Heritage, documents, mood |
| Velvet | Rich, deep tones | Evening portraits, indoor events |
LUT: The Right Look for the Situation
A LUT is a lookup table that remaps every colour in the frame. The twelve situational looks in this tab are built as real 3D lookup tables and applied pixel by pixel on the device — not a translucent colour sheet laid over the picture, which is why the result holds up in shadows and in skin tones.
| LUT | Designed for |
|---|---|
| Landscape / Portrait / Food / Pet / Plant | Subject-specific looks — scenery, faces, dishes, animals and greenery |
| Sunny / Cloudy / Rain / Snow | Weather conditions, so an overcast scene gets contrast instead of a grey cast |
| Sunset / Night / Morning | Time of day: warm highlights, lifted dark tones, or a clean daylight start |
Intensity: 35% by Default, Remembered per Preset
- Default on first use: about 35%. Enough to see the look, gentle enough to stay believable.
- Remembered per preset. Set Skin Refiner to 40% and Cinematic to 60%, and both come back exactly like that next time.
- The slider tops out just below full strength — deliberately. At absolute maximum the layered preview and the exported file would no longer agree, so the app keeps the top of the range at a point where what you see is what gets saved.
- Beauty and colour have independent sliders, because they are independent selections.
How It Works With Everything Else
- Watermarks: the stamp is drawn over the graded frame, so the timestamp, location and logo are unaffected by the filter.
- AI cutout: the grade and the LUT are applied through the same pipeline as the cutout, so a replaced background is graded to match the subject.
- Video: the same strip works while recording — the LUT, filter and beauty treatment are written into the video frames, not added in a later editor.
- Dual camera: dual photos and dual video use the same overlay pipeline, so both cameras get the look.
- Doodles: markup is drawn on top of the graded image.
How to Set Up a Look (Step by Step)
- Start with the subject. People: pick a beauty preset first. Scenes and objects: go straight to the colour tabs.
- Choose the situation, then the style. Open the LUT tab and match the scene and weather; open the Filter tab when you want a mood rather than a scene match.
- Dial the intensity. Begin around the default 35% and move up until the look is obvious — then step back one notch.
- Check skin tones. If faces start to look orange or grey, lower the colour intensity rather than the beauty intensity.
- Shoot. The preview is the result: the same stack is baked into the photo or video, with the watermark on top.
Tips for Looks That Hold Up
- Match the LUT to the weather, not to your mood. “Cloudy” on an overcast day fixes flat light; “Sunny” on the same day makes everything look artificial.
- Keep beauty restrained for work photos. Inspection, insurance and ID-style shots want recognisable faces — a low Skin Refiner value, no V-Shape.
- Use B&W or Cinematic for documentation when you want defects or texture to stand out instead of colour.
- Consistency beats variety for teams. Agree on one LUT and one intensity per project so every report looks like it came from the same camera.
- Save the original when you might re-edit. “Save original too” writes an unwatermarked, ungraded copy alongside the finished one (a VIP option), which is handy when a client asks for a different look later.
- Grading is not exposure. If a shot is too dark, lift it with the camera’s exposure control before reaching for a brighter filter.
Caveats Worth Knowing
| Point | What it means |
|---|---|
| The look is baked in | Filters, LUTs and beauty are written into the saved photo or video. To keep an ungraded version, use “save original too” (VIP) or shoot without the strip. |
| Beauty needs a face | The face presets only act when a face is detected; on a landscape or a product shot they do nothing. |
| The slider stops just short of maximum | By design, so the preview and the exported file match exactly rather than the preview showing a heavier effect than you get. |
| Each preset keeps its own strength | Your settings persist per preset, which is convenient — but two people using the same phone for different jobs will inherit each other’s values. |
| Stacking is allowed, not unlimited | One beauty preset plus one colour preset (filter or LUT) at a time; picking a new LUT replaces the previous colour look. |
| The app theme is not a filter | The interface theme changes the app’s colours only — it never affects the photo. See the theme and language guide. |
| Heavy processing needs a capable device | Beauty, LUT and cutout all run on the device; on older phones the live preview can be slower than the final capture. |
| Grading does not repair a bad exposure | Use the exposure control while shooting rather than expecting a preset to rescue an under- or over-exposed frame. |
Frequently Asked Questions
How many beauty, filter and LUT presets are there?
Twelve beauty presets (including No Beauty), twelve creative colour filters, and twelve situational LUTs — thirty-six looks in total across the three tabs.
Can I use beauty and a colour filter at the same time?
Yes. Beauty and colour are separate selections, so a face treatment and a LUT or filter can be active together, each with its own intensity.
How does the intensity slider work?
Each preset remembers its own value, starting around 35%. The slider’s range stops just below full strength on purpose, so the preview matches the saved file exactly.
What is the difference between a filter and a LUT?
Filters are creative looks built from tone curves, colour balance, vibrance, vignette and grain. LUTs are 3D lookup tables that remap every colour, with presets matched to subjects and weather such as Landscape, Portrait, Sunny, Cloudy, Sunset or Night.
Do these effects apply to video as well as photos?
Yes. The same strip works while recording, and the beauty treatment, filter and LUT are written into the video frames rather than added afterwards.
Will the filter affect my watermark?
The watermark is composited after the grade, so the timestamp, location, map or logo stays exactly as designed. The photo underneath is graded; the stamp is not.
Can I get an ungraded version of the photo?
Yes, with the “save original too” VIP option, which writes an unwatermarked, ungraded copy alongside the finished photo — useful if a client later asks for a different look.
Why does beauty seem to do nothing on some photos?
Because the beauty presets are face-driven. Without a detected face there is nothing for the smoothing, contouring or teeth treatment to act on, so use the colour tabs for landscapes and objects.
One Strip, Whole Look
Beauty, filters and LUTs sit in the same place for a reason: they are part of taking the picture, not a chore afterwards. Pick the treatment for the subject, the look for the scene, set the intensity once, and every photo and clip comes out finished — with the watermark recording where and when it happened.
- Install TempoAI Camera: TempoAI Camera on Google Play
- Open the filter strip and try a LUT plus a beauty preset on the same subject
- Pair the look with a watermark template — see the template guide
Related reading: video watermarks and LUTs while recording, AI cutout, and the complete watermark camera guide.