Hi everyone,
I’ve been editing a series of archived interviews—originally recorded on a mid-2010s DSLR. The conversations are fantastic, but a lot of the close-up shots suffer from soft, slightly out-of-focus faces. It’s not motion blur, just that old combination of low lighting, shallow depth of field, and camera shake.
Since I’m working in Premiere Pro (latest version), here’s what I’ve already tried:
Unsharp Mask & Sharpen:
Slight improvement, but the skin tones start to break down quickly, especially in darker scenes.
Lumetri tweaks:
Helped boost contrast and midtones, but didn’t improve clarity.
AE upscale with Detail-preserving Upscale:
Somewhat better, but still doesn’t get me that clean, modern look.
At this point, I’m looking for more advanced ideas and wondering:
:light_bulb: Has anyone found a solid method—either within Premiere or using external tools—to recover facial clarity without introducing artifacts?
I know some editors swear by Topaz, but I’m trying to avoid bouncing between too many platforms. Recently, someone recommended trying out UniFab's Face Enhancer tool, which is designed specifically for improving facial features in blurry or compressed videos.
I looked into it and found this guide helpful:
👉 How to unblur a video — it walks through both basic fixes and more advanced face enhancement techniques, including how to prep footage before import.
What I’m really wondering is:
Are there any Premiere-native plugins that can isolate and sharpen facial features?
Has anyone successfully used something like UniFab in their post workflow?
Any tricks for manually masking + sharpening only face areas without ruining the background?
I’m not trying to make things overly “AI-clean”—just want to recover enough detail to make the interviews more engaging on modern displays.
Would appreciate any experience or workflows others have used!
Thanks
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