Lightweight Additive Blend Maps for Texture-Preserving Face Retouching: A Neural Approach to Traditional Photographic Techniques

Abstract Professional photography face retouching requires achieving a balance between texture preservation and quality increase, a problem that conventional automated methods find difficult to effectively handle. We provide a new lightweight neural architecture that converts conventional dodge-and-burn photography methods into predictions for learnable additive blend maps. Instead of rebuilding whole images, our method uses a small U-Net that predicts pixel-level changes, allowing for exact brightness adjustments while maintaining the original skin texture. With a 6MB model that operates effectively on common hardware, the technique produces high-quality results while preserving texture fidelity, which is crucial for professional applications. Experimental validation offers significant computing advantages while demonstrating competitive performance with current methods.