How to Use Video Effects in PowerDirector

PowerDirector's Video Effects can blur the faces they detect, add an effect to a moving person, or restyle a whole clip. Filters & LUTs give you a quick way to change a video's color style or overall atmosphere.

Click the Effects tab at the top left, and its sidebar shows two groups: Video Effects and Filters & LUTs.

Click a category under Video Effects to see its effects. The list starts with these categories: Popular, Face Blur, Body Effect, Effect with Sound, Blur, Split, Halloween, Highlight, and Border. Scroll down for more.

Some effects find the subject for you. Effects in Face Blur detect faces, and the ones in Body Effect pick out the most prominent subjects in the shot. Others change the look of the whole clip, like the four Highlight effects in the screenshot: Spotlight On, Highlight Glow, Hero Spotlight, and Flashlight 01.

Drag an effect from the grid onto a clip on the timeline to apply it. In this example, it's the Brushes face blur.

Click the shortcut that appears above the timeline to open Effect Settings. Or click the small i in the lower-left corner of the clip and pick the effect by name. The i still works when you've stacked several effects on the same clip.

The controls in Effect Settings change with the effect's category, so face blurs and body effects each get their own options.

Face Blur effects find the faces themselves. In Effect Settings, the Detected Faces row has a thumbnail of each face.

Every face starts out checked, so uncheck any face you want left visible. That's what you need when your subject agreed to be filmed and the passers-by didn't. In the shot below, one face has been unchecked, so he stays sharp while she stays blurred. Use the Strength slider above to set how heavy the blur is.

Effects in the Body Effect category work differently. PowerDirector applies the effect to the most prominent subjects in the shot, so when two people are equally prominent, both get it. The options at the top of the panel depend on the effect: Aura 2, for example, has Glow Size and Glow Color.

Some effects let you set a mask to decide which part of the frame gets the effect. Look for the Effect mask row in Effect Settings. Body effects have it, and so do effects that restyle the whole clip, such as Chinese Painting 2.

For a body effect, PowerDirector starts with a mask it generated for the subject it detected. To choose the subject yourself, click Select one object to open AI-Based Object Mask.

First, click the object in the preview with the selection tool until the blue overlay covers all of it. Use the deselect tool to remove anything that got selected by mistake. Then click Track Object, wait for the tracking to finish, and click OK.

Make sure the blue area covers the whole subject before you track, so the tracking only has to run once.

After you click OK, the mask you made appears in the Effect mask row, and the effect only covers that subject.

To apply the effect everywhere except your subject, check Invert masked area. Use it to restyle the background and leave the person untouched, as with the woman on the right below.

The Effect mask row also offers plain rectangular and circular masks. Pick one, and a frame appears in the preview for you to drag and resize. Under the shapes, Mask feather radius softens the mask's edge, and Invert masked area swaps which side gets the effect.

Combine these masks with motion tracking to keep a blur or mosaic on something that moves. The motion tracking tutorial covers that.

To take an effect off again, select it in the Applied Effect list on the left of the panel and click the trash icon underneath. Once a clip carries more than one effect, delete from this list.

A filter lays light leaks, grain, or texture over your video. A Color Lookup Table, or LUT, applies a preset color tone to the footage itself.

In the Effects tab, click Filters & LUTs in the sidebar. It opens these categories: Retro Film, Lens Flare, Light Leaks, Portrait, Vintage, Urban, Food, and Colors. Some hold filters, like Retro Film, and others hold LUTs, like Vintage.

Drag a filter onto a clip on the timeline. It applies to the whole clip, with no extra track, and a small i appears on the clip. Here, it's Jeju 01 from the Portrait category.

To change the color tone instead, drag a LUT onto a clip. Like a filter, it applies to the whole clip right away. Here, it's Movie 05 from the Vintage category.

Open Effect Settings from the shortcut above the timeline. Or click the i on the clip and pick the LUT. Its Strength slider starts at 100, so lower it when the preset looks too strong.

To cover only part of a clip, right-click the filter's thumbnail in Filters & LUTs and choose Add to Effect Track on Timeline. A filter you haven't downloaded yet offers only Download and Hide, so download it first.

An FX track appears below track 1, with the filter on it. Drag either edge of the filter to set where it starts and ends.

To add your own LUT files, click the three-dot button at the top right of the library and choose Import Color Presets & CLUTs. The supported formats page lists the file types you can import.

We tested these steps in PowerDirector 365 versions 23.6 and 25.0.10 on Windows.