On a social or live app, people decide whether to turn their camera on in about a second. A good beauty filter is often what makes them say yes. Ours is included with every Gravix Cloud plan.
Why beauty filters matter in live apps
If you run a dating app, a social video app or a live creator platform, you already know the pattern. Hosts who feel good about how they look go live more often and stay live longer. Callers who can soften harsh lighting keep their cameras on. Viewers notice the difference, even when they could not tell you what changed.
That is why so many teams end up adding a beauty filter after launch. The usual route is to license a separate beauty SDK from another company, integrate it next to the calling SDK, and pay for it separately. It works, but it adds a second vendor, a second contract and a second set of updates to every release.
We built the Gravix beauty filter so Gravix Cloud customers do not have to take that route.
What the Gravix beauty filter does
The Gravix beauty filter adds skin smoothing, tone and colour grading, face shaping and makeup effects to live video. It is included free with every Gravix Cloud subscription. There is no separate filter fee and no per-minute charge for using it.
It runs on Android and the web, with a Flutter plugin for Flutter apps.
Six presets to start from
Most users never want to touch a slider. They want to tap a look and go. The filter comes with six presets:
| Preset | What it does |
|---|---|
| Natural | A light touch that keeps the person looking like themselves. |
| Smooth | Softer skin texture, with the face shape left as it is. |
| Glow | Brighter skin and a soft glow, for evening and stage light. |
| Fresh | A cooler, clean colour grade with bright eyes. |
| Rosy | Warm blush and lip tint with a warm colour grade. |
| Fair | A brighter, lighter tone with gentle face shaping. |
Natural is the one we suggest as a default for calling apps, because people on a one-to-one call usually want to look like themselves on a good day, not like someone else.
Controls for everything else
Every preset is built from the same set of controls, so a user can pick a preset and then tune it:
- Skin: smoothing, brightening, redness reduction and white balance.
- Face shaping: slim the face and adjust the eyes, chin, jaw and nose.
- Makeup: teeth whitening, eye brightening, blush and lip tint.
- Colour grades: colour looks over the whole picture, from warm to cool.
One look in calls and live streams
The filter is applied to the camera picture before it is sent. In practice that means the same look shows up everywhere the camera does: in one-to-one calls, in group calls and in live streams. A host who sets up their look before going live does not have to set it up again when they jump into a private call afterwards.
Design your own looks in Gravix Studio
Presets are a good start, but many apps want a signature look of their own, such as a seasonal look for a campaign, a branded colour grade or a set of looks for a creator programme.
Gravix Studio is a look editor that runs in your browser. There is no code to write and nothing to install. A designer or product manager builds a look from six kinds of layer:
- Tone: skin smoothing, brightening and white balance.
- Face shaping: gentle changes to the face shape, eyes, chin, jaw and nose.
- Colour grade: a colour look over the whole picture.
- Makeup: blush, lip tint, teeth and eyes.
- Stickers: graphics placed on the picture.
- Captions: text on the picture, styled to match the look.
You can preview the look live on your own camera, on a video or on a photo, inside a phone or desktop frame. When it is ready, Studio exports the whole look as a single look file, and the Gravix beauty filter renders it in your app.
That split matters for how teams work. Developers integrate the beauty filter once. After that, designers and product teams make the looks, without waiting for an engineer. To get access to Gravix Studio, talk to our team.
Why one provider beats two
We are biased, so here is the practical case rather than the marketing one. Compared with adding a separate beauty SDK from another company next to your calling SDK, the Gravix beauty filter gives you:
- One provider and one bill. The beauty filter is part of your Gravix Cloud subscription. There is no second licence to negotiate, budget and renew.
- No extra cost as you grow. The filter has no separate fee and no per-minute charge, so a busy month does not mean a bigger beauty bill.
- Built for calls and streams. It is made to work with Gravix Cloud calls and live streams, rather than added on afterwards.
- Looks made by designers, not engineers. With Gravix Studio, the people who care about how the looks feel can make them, and engineers stay focused on the product.
- One place to ask. If a look or a call is not behaving, you call one team. You do not have to work out which vendor to contact first.
A dedicated beauty SDK can be the right call for some products, especially ones that need a very large catalogue of AR effects or platforms the Gravix filter does not cover today. If that is you, keep it. For most calling, dating and live creator apps, the included filter covers what users actually tap on.
Where it fits
Teams we see getting the most from the beauty filter:
- Social and dating apps, where one-to-one video calls are the moment that matters and people want to look their best.
- Live creator and gifting apps, where hosts go live every day and their look is part of their brand.
- Community and audio room apps that add video stages, where the switch from audio to camera is easier with a good preset.
Getting started
If you already use Gravix Cloud, the beauty filter is part of your plan. If you do not yet, new accounts get 10,000 free minutes when they sign up, so you can try calls, live streams and the filter on your own devices before you pay. Prices start at $1 per 2,000 minutes on the Starter plan.
See it on the Gravix Beauty Filter product page, read more on the Gravix Cloud product page, compare providers in Gravix Cloud vs Agora vs ZEGOCLOUD, or tell us about your app and we will help you choose the right looks for your users.