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No. 07 — AI Tools · Cloud HDPro · on our GPU

Portrait photo, skin, not plastic.

The failure mode of every automatic portrait tool is the same: skin turned to porcelain and a face that is no longer quite the person. Cloud HD rebuilds texture rather than erasing it, and checks the restored face against the one you uploaded before it hands anything back.

Pro · Cloud HDDeleted on completionUp to 25 MB · 24 MP
Enhance a portraitCloud HD · our GPU

Pro to enhance your photo →

How it works

  1. Pick the portrait — a JPEG, PNG or WebP up to 25 MB and 24 megapixels.
  2. It is uploaded to our server for that run and deleted when the run finishes, and in all cases within 24 hours.
  3. Download it at the same size, with the face restored and the frame cleaned up. One general Cloud HD run.

This page is the AI photo enhancer, tuned to portraiture and the line between enhancing and retouching.

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Enhance a Portrait Photo — Pro, on our server

Texture is what separates a photograph of a person from a drawing of one. Pores, the faint down along a cheek, the way light breaks on a lip — those cues are what make a face read as real, and they live in exactly the frequency band that noise reduction destroys first. A smoothing filter cannot tell them from speckle and takes both, which is the entire explanation for the plastic look. The Cloud HD enhancer reconstructs instead of erasing: it suppresses noise while rebuilding the texture the noise was sitting on, which is a harder problem and a far better answer for a portrait.

Enhancement and retouching are different jobs, and mixing them is how trust gets lost. Nothing here slims a face, whitens teeth, removes a spot or opens a closed eye. The goal is the person who stood in front of the lens, recovered from softness, noise and compression. Anything cosmetic is a deliberate choice you should make yourself, afterwards, in a tool that says it is doing so — and for a portrait going into a CV, a passport application or a professional directory, an untouched-looking result is usually the requirement rather than the compromise. The mechanics of the face pass, including how the mask keeps hair and collar yours, are set out on enhancing a face in a photo.

Put the portrait through in the right order. Choose the frame, then crop on your own device to the framing you want, then enhance, then do anything involving the background — a headshot background removal is cleanest when it is cutting around a hairline that has already been de-noised. Delivery comes last: the image compressor gets the file down to whatever a site or an application form demands, in your browser, with no upload. Compressing before enhancing simply hands the model damage to undo.

A portrait is personal data, and the handling is specific. Cloud HD is Pro-only and opt-in, and it is the only part of MiniPx that leaves your device. Your portrait is uploaded to our server for that run and deleted when the run finishes, and in all cases within 24 hours; it is processed in the United States on Cloudflare R2 storage and Modal GPUs, encrypted in transit, and never used to train anything. One run is a single general run out of 150 a month on Pro Monthly or 200 on Pro Annual, prices exclude tax, and a refused or failed run is not charged. The portrait is processed by RestoreFormer++, and the result names the model.

How it works

  1. Start from the sharpest frame: Portraits usually exist in bursts. Pick the frame with the crispest eyes rather than the best expression, if you have to choose.
  2. Crop to the portrait on your device: Trim to the framing you want first, so the pixel budget sits on the face. Cropping uploads nothing.
  3. Run one Cloud HD pass: JPEG, PNG or WebP up to 25 MB and 24 megapixels. The whole photograph is cleaned up and the face is restored under a mask.
  4. Check the likeness, then style it: Compare eyes and mouth at 100% against the original. Any smoothing, warmth or grading you want is a separate, later decision.

Frequently asked questions

Does it smooth skin the way a beauty filter does?
No, and the difference is the whole point. A beauty filter blurs skin and then draws a sharp edge back around the eyes and lips, which is why the result looks like porcelain. This model reconstructs texture as it removes noise, so pores, fine lines and stubble survive. If you want a smoothed look, that is a stylistic edit and belongs in an editor afterwards.
Will it change how the person actually looks?
It aims not to. Each face is rebuilt and then compared against the one that arrived, and a reconstruction that has drifted too far from the person in your photograph is left alone rather than substituted. Small shifts are still possible on very soft input, so on any portrait that matters, compare the eyes and mouth against the original at 100%.
Can I run this on a professional headshot before changing the background?
Yes, and that order is the right one. Enhance the portrait first so the cut-out is made from a clean edge — hair against a background is where a matting model struggles, and noise along the hairline makes it harder. Then take the enhanced file to the background remover and place it on whatever your brand needs.
What happens to flyaway hair and loose strands?
The face pass is confined to the face by a mask that follows its outline, so hair keeps your original pixels and is not redrawn. The whole-photograph clean-up still runs over it, which usually helps fine strands read more clearly against a background. What it will not do is invent hair that softness had already erased entirely.
Does it work as well on children and on older faces?
Reasonably, with one thing to watch. Models trained on faces can lean towards smooth, conventionally lit adult skin, so a heavily softened input of a very young or a much older face is where an unwanted shift is most likely. Feed it the sharpest copy you own, and check the result against the original before you use it anywhere.