In today’s world of image editing, tools that make tricky tasks simple are game-changers. One standout is a facial expression editor on Hugging Face. Picture this—you can turn a smile into a frown or add surprise to a face with just a few clicks. It’s fast, easy, and works in real-time.
Expression Editor demo outputs
Why Expression Editor Stands Out
Real-Time Adjustments The coolest feature of this tool is its ability to show changes in real-time. Users can move sliders to change facial expressions instantly. Whether you want a character to wink, blink, or show surprise, the changes happen right away. This quick feedback makes the editing process smooth, letting you experiment more.
Easy to Use Interface The tool is super simple to use. After signing in to Hugging Face, just drag and drop your image into the input field. From there, you can use the sliders to adjust expressions with ease. The clean layout makes it accessible, even if you’re new to editing.
Flexible Expression Options You can adjust more than just smiles or frowns. Rotate the head, tilt it, or tweak individual features like eyes and mouth. This range makes it great for creating unique datasets, especially if you’re building custom characters for AI models.
How to Use Expression Editor
Sign In: Go to the Hugging Face site and sign in to access the tool.
Upload Image: Drag and drop your image into the input box.
Adjust Sliders: Move the sliders to change expressions. Each one controls a specific part of the face.
Save Your Work: Once you're done, save the image in your preferred format, like PNG.
Save edited images in different formats. The default is webp, but you can pick JPG, PNG and tweak quality settings. There’s a known issue where it might still save in webp (did for me).
Expression Editor Alternatives
If you need more advanced tools or higher resolution:
LivePortrait offers eyes and lips retargeting, I've covered it in my earlier posts. Online version won't give you head tilts but it will not shrink your images like the Facial Expression Editor presented above. And it's free.
MimicPhoto is a versatile paid tool for this. It hosts LivePortrait too.
Comfy UI: A locally installed user interface + AdvancedLivePortrait as custom node for saving images in their original resolution.
Advanced Live Portrait in ComfyUI editing screenshot
It’s a bit harder to learn but worth it for advanced users as you can install heaps more tools inside of it, inclusind text-to-image generators like Stable Diffusion and Flux. This project has been registered with ComfyUI-Manager, so once you have Comfy UI and ComfyUI-Manager, you can install it in one click. It's pretty decent, but if you increase crop factor needing for a head with thick hair like this dude's to tilt together with his face and not stay stationary while his face is angled, then overall quality deteriorates quickly. Also keep in mind that every single real time result is a separate large png image being saved in the outputs folder of Comfy UI so you can soon enough have hundreds of images there. This concerns other tools like Flux etc. So on my computer I'm running cron, removing files older than 1 hour: 0 * * * * find fullpath/ComfyUI/output -type f -mmin +60 -exec rm -f {} \;
This real-time editor is a big step forward in photo editing. It’s quick, easy, and packed with features for creators and developers alike. Whether you’re working on AI projects or just having fun with photos, this tool makes it simple to bring your ideas to life.
We are so spoiled, people! All these amazing tools at our fingertips. People just 20 years ago couldn't even dream of having something like that available to them.
Stay tuned for more cool tools and tutorials, and share your creations in the comments below.
