Hello, I’m Andrea Geiss. Today I’m going to show you how to protect your identity on social media and give your fans a face to enjoy. Stay Safe & Get a Face!
Why?
Many creators and social media users, especially women, are reluctant to show their faces for various reasons. One of these reasons is that they are afraid of being recognized and attacked in real life. Many of us have been stalked by people who don’t understand boundaries and respect.
Because of this, many beautiful images get cropped unnaturally to hide the face of the creator. This makes those images less appealing and reduces their beauty.
So this is a quick tutorial on how to swap your face with an AI-generated one so perfect that it will become your real face of your online persona. And you won’t have to worry about makeup!
This tutorial assumes that you’re using a computer, not a phone. It might work on a phone as well, but using a computer is so much faster.
Choose your look
First, you need to choose a face that you like.
Choose one that is similar to yours, but not identical: use the same skin tone and face shape as your real face, but feel free to change eye color, mouth shape, lip size, eye shape, eyebrow color.
You can ask any good AI app to generate your new face. Give it instructions by describing your face and asking for a photorealistic close-up front-facing portrait. Try over and over until you’re happy with the result.
Don’t think of it as a fake face. Think of it as a SAFE face.
For example, this is my partner Deirdre’s AI-generated safe face (she used SeaArt.ai, but you can use any other similar app or site).
Try your new safe face
Now let’s use this face.
Choose a photo of yourself in which your face is visible. Try with a safe-for-work (non-nude) photo: something like this, which is an AI-generated generic test face (this is NOT Deirdre’s real face).
Use Pixlr
DISCLAIMER: I’m not paid by Pixlr to recommend them. Actually, I pay them to use their services; I’m a regular customer. I recommend Pixlr because I’ve seen that it works very well.
Go to Pixlr.com. Open a free account, which should give you a few free face swaps per day.
On Pixlr, choose the AI Face Swap option you see in the bottom row or just go directly to https://pixlr.com/face-swap/.
Warning!
The next step will send your REAL face to Pixlr. If you are uncomfortable with that and don’t trust Pixlr for any reason, STOP NOW.
If you’re OK with sending your real face to Pixlr, click on Upload Target to upload your SOURCE image (the photo with your REAL face).
Now click on Upload Face to upload your NEW face (your safe face, the one that your viewers will see instead of your real one).
You should get something like this:
Now click on Run Face Swap and wait a few seconds. You’ll get something like this:
If you click on the pic with the swapped face, you’ll see an arrow. Click on it to download the face-swapped pic.
There you are!
You now have a photo of your real body, but with a safe face that’s not your real one. You can post this photo safely. Just make sure that you don’t have any other easily recognizable features in the photo (tattoos, beauty marks, etc.).
Limitations
This simple method works only if yours is the only face in the photo. If there are multiple faces, Pixlr will try to replace a face at random, which might not be yours.
There is a workaround for this, but I will explain it in another tutorial.
But wait…
An Even Better Face!
Usually the result of this method is already very good, but if you’re looking for the best results and you want to have an even more realistic safe face, you can follow these easy steps.
Import your safe face and your original photo (the one with your real face) into any image editor that allows multiple layers (I used Pixelmator for this example). Put the real face layer on top.
Now select the real face layer and use the soft erase tool (with smooth, blended edges) to erase only the area of the eyes, eyebrows, nose and mouth, following the smile creases. You’ll see the new face appear.
This is the area to erase (I’ve turned off the safe-face layer for clarity):
This method preserves most of your natural skin details (facial hair, skin pores, tiny color variations) and avoids the “Botox-like”, unnaturally smooth look of many plain face swaps.
Compare the simple face swap with this more refined version:
A final trick!
Sometimes the face swap looks phony because the sharpness of the safe face is different from the sharpness of the rest of the image.
In this case, use a Gaussian blur (available in most image editors) to slightly blur the safe face layer until it matches the sharpness of the rest of the body and face (which is on a different layer).
Here’s an example: the face on the left looks a bit phony and odd because the eyes, nose and mouth are too sharp compared to the rest of the head and body, which is out of focus.
A tiny dose of Gaussian blur on the safe-face layer, and now it looks much more natural.
That’s it!
I hope you found this tutorial useful and clear. If you did, please tell your friends. Your support encourages me to write more tutorials.
Most of all, STAY SAFE.
All my best,
