TikTok has quickly become one of the most popular social media platforms, with over 1 billion monthly active users as of September 2022 (source). A key part of TikTok’s appeal is its array of fun filters that users can easily apply to their videos to transform their appearance.
Filters like Beauty Mode (source) are incredibly popular on TikTok, allowing users to smooth their skin, enlarge their eyes, and enhance their features. Filters provide an easy way for users to edit their videos and feel more confident sharing them.
While TikTok makes it simple to add filters, removing filters can be more challenging. This article provides an overview of whether it’s possible to remove TikTok filters from videos after they’ve been applied, the limitations, and alternatives if filter removal isn’t fully achievable.
How TikTok Filters Work
TikTok’s filters are special effects that are applied in real-time when users are recording videos in the app. As the video is capturing, users can choose from a variety of filters that alter the look and feel of the footage. According to an article on LinkedIn, “Filters leverage AR technology to identify features in the camera image like faces, environment, ambient lighting etc. and make enhancements to create the desired artistic effect” (Source).
After recording, TikTok also provides editing tools that allow further adjustments to filters and effects. Users can tweak the filter intensity, try different filters, add stickers/text, and make other enhancements. So the initial filter choice simply sets the foundation, while the editing stage offers more versatility. Overall, TikTok’s filters can dramatically change the appearance of faces, environments, lighting, and other elements in the video.
Challenges of Removing TikTok Filters
TikTok filters directly modify the video as it’s being recorded, applying effects like color changes, visual distortions, or facial tuning in real-time. This means the filter effects get “baked in” to the final video file, rather than applied as a separate layer on top. According to an article on Descriptive Audio, “TikTok doesn’t provide users with original files to revert back to” after applying filters. As a result, it can be very difficult to isolate and reverse the changes made by TikTok filters after the fact.
As the WikiHow guide explains, “TikTok filters are more than just overlays…the effects are rendered into the video itself.” This makes removing filters a complicated process of trying to undo those rendered effects. Simple tools like cropping or covering part of the screen will not work to eliminate filter components. Short of recreating the original video from scratch, perfectly reversing filter effects through post-processing alone presents a significant technical challenge.
Partial Filter Removal
While completely reversing TikTok filters may not be possible for most users, some third party tools can help reduce or partially remove some of the effects of filters (source). These tools leverage neural networks that are trained to estimate and undo some types of edits made by filters.
For example, tools like InVID and Deeptrace use AI to detect edits and can walk back some changes to facial features, smoothing, color changes, and other adjustments (source). However, they cannot completely revert videos to the original unfiltered footage.
The results from these AI-powered tools will vary depending on the complexity of filters used. Subtle beauty filters may see better results compared to dramatic style transfers or animated effects. Overall, some residual effects usually remain even after using these removers.
Recovering the Original Video
Recovering the original, unfiltered video is nearly impossible unless you have access to the original file before filters were applied. This is because TikTok applies filters and effects as part of the video encoding process. Once a video is exported from TikTok with filters, the filters are baked into the video file itself. There is no simple way to digitally remove the effects after the fact.
The only way to recover the unfiltered original is if you still have access to the first video file before uploading and editing it in the TikTok app. For example, if you shot the video on your phone and still have the original camera roll file, you could use that clean video. Or if you downloaded the video straight from TikTok before adding any effects, that would work as well.
But if the only copy you have is the final exported video from TikTok with filters already applied, there is no way to reliably remove the effects and precisely recover the original footage. The data has been permanently altered by TikTok’s processing. At best, third party software could try to estimate and reconstruct the original frames, but this would not be an accurate restoration.
In summary, recovering an unfiltered original TikTok video requires access to the pristine video file before any editing. If the only copy has baked-in filters, the original cannot be perfectly restored through technical means.
Why Remove TikTok Filters?
There are several reasons why someone may want to remove filters from a TikTok video:
First, some people simply prefer seeing the original, unaltered footage. TikTok’s filters can dramatically change the look and feel of a video, smoothing skin, enlarging eyes, slimming faces, and more. For those who want to see the real person behind the filter, removing effects is necessary.
Second, many dislike the artificial, filtered appearance of some TikTok videos. While the beauty and creative filters may be fun, excessive filtering can look jarring or unrealistic. Viewers seeking authenticity may want filters stripped away.
Finally, unfiltered original videos are often needed for other uses. If wanting to repurpose TikTok footage for a professional project, filters likely need to be eliminated. Likewise, news or educational content requires the raw footage without modifications.
Thus, reasons like preferring reality, disliking excessive filtering, or requiring unaltered videos drive the need to remove effects from TikTok videos in some circumstances.
When Filter Removal Makes Sense
There are a few scenarios where removing TikTok filters can be worthwhile:
If you have the original, unfiltered video available, removing the filter is straightforward. You can simply re-upload or use the original instead of the filtered version. As this source explains, having the original makes filter removal easy.
For videos with subtle filters applied, like color changes or brightness adjustments, filter removal may successfully recover most of the original appearance. As this guide points out, light filters are easier to eliminate.
Using AI-powered tools to partially reduce filters shows promise for recovering some video details. As noted in this article, emerging technology can help diminish some filter effects.
Alternative Approaches
If you don’t have the original unfiltered video available, there are a couple alternative approaches to removing or altering TikTok filters:
One option is to simply record a new video without any filters applied. This ensures you have a clean, unfiltered version to work with. Just be sure to capture it in the same setting with the same angles and lighting to match the original as closely as possible.
Another approach is to use video editing tools to apply adjustments that counteract the filter. For example, reducing saturation can help remove some of the exaggerated colors from a filter. Adjusting hue, brightness, and contrast may also help reduce the filter’s effects. However, this can be tedious to do manually across an entire video (Source). There are also automated AI tools like InVID that can detect and remove filters from videos through deep learning.
In some cases, these alternative methods may not fully remove a filter, but can help reduce its intensity. They provide options when you don’t have access to the original unfiltered footage.
Future Possibilities
As AI and machine learning algorithms continue to advance, there is hope that better tools could be developed to isolate and reverse TikTok filter effects. Companies like Deepware are already using AI to automatically remove filters, and the technology is only expected to improve. More advanced AI in the future may be able to completely reverse complex filters applied to videos.
Another possibility is if TikTok provided access to original unfiltered videos. As the platform owner, TikTok likely stores the original videos before filters are applied. If they allowed downloading of the original videos, it would make filter removal trivial. However, TikTok has not indicated any plans to offer this type of access. For now, TikTok users have to rely on incomplete third-party solutions.
As TikTok continues to grow in popularity, demand for better filter removal capabilities will likely also increase. TikTok may eventually feel pressure, either from users or competing platforms, to provide better options. But for now, the technology is still limited. With time, AI breakthroughs or shifts in TikTok’s policies could make filter removal a far easier process.
Conclusion
In summary, while TikTok’s filters can significantly alter videos through facial transformations, color changes, and other special effects, removing these filters completely poses some challenges. The key to filter removal lies in access to the original, unfiltered video file. Without this, only partial filter reduction may be possible through Manual editing techniques and AI-based tools.
Complete filter removal depends on the complexity of filters applied. Simple filters like color changes are easier to reverse than facial filters that alter shapes and textures. As AI and deep learning advance, more comprehensive filter removal may become achievable from the filtered video alone.
For most casual TikTok users, the work involved in stripping filters may not justify the benefits. But for content creators and publishers who need the original, unfiltered footage, investing time in filter removal can pay off under the right circumstances.
While TikTok’s filters can be difficult to remove entirely, the possibility exists given the right original source material and editing techniques. As artificial intelligence progresses, filter removal may become more achievable directly from the filtered footage.
