Apply retouching settings by gender

What you will do

Use By gender when a portrait series needs separate retouching settings for faces that Arams classifies as Male or Female. The Others tab controls the rest of the photograph outside the detected faces, including hands, arms, legs, clothing, hair, and the background.

This chapter uses Local processing with plugins installed and activated on your computer. Cloud also provides the By gender category controls. Cloud processing requires an internet connection, permission to upload the photographs, tools available to your signed-in account, and enough retouch credits for the operation.

This guide uses Heal, Dodge Burn, and Portrait Volumes as examples. You will configure a representative photograph, copy its complete image settings to similar portraits, and export processed copies while keeping the originals.

Arams 1.10.4 · English interface · No audio. Heal and Dodge Burn start at 90 for both faces; the Male settings then change to 20 while the Female settings stay at 90. The comparison alternates between the original and retouched photograph. These strengths illustrate the difference, rather than recommended settings.

Before you start

In Settings, turn on Automatic face search. If Arams displays an analysis-consent message, read it and continue only if you agree. The Male and Female tabs depend on face detection.
Create a project.
Import your portraits and wait for their thumbnails to appear.
Make sure the tools you want to use are installed and activated for Local processing on this computer.

Steps

Choose a reference photograph

Choose a photograph that represents the lighting, framing, and skin detail in the series. A photograph containing both displayed categories can help you configure them under the same lighting, but it is not required.

Select the reference photograph and wait for automatic face search to finish.
Open the retouching panel, choose Local, and select By gender.
Use the Male and Female tabs shown for the detected faces. If a count or category looks wrong, correct it as described in the optional section below before choosing the settings.

By gender shows Male (1) and Female (1) for a photograph with two detected faces. — Arams groups the detected faces into Male and Female tabs so you can adjust their retouching separately. Arams 1.10.2 · Windows · American English

The labels are Arams face classifications that determine which settings are applied. They are not aesthetic recommendations or instructions for how a person should look.

Set the face and body-area retouching

Open the Male tab and enable the tools you want. This example uses Heal, Dodge Burn, and Portrait Volumes. Set a starting strength for each tool. After export, judge skin detail after Heal, tonal transitions after Dodge Burn, and facial volume after Portrait Volumes.

The Male tab has Heal 40, Dodge Burn 45, and Portrait Volumes 40 enabled. — An example of three enabled tools in the Male tab. Choose strengths by the result on your photograph. Arams 1.10.2 · Windows · American English

Repeat the process in the Female tab. The two categories may use the same or different settings: choose from the result you want for the faces in your photographs, not from a prescribed difference in appearance.

The Female tab has Heal 55, Dodge Burn 60, and Portrait Volumes 55 enabled. — The Female tab has its own strengths for the same tools. Arams 1.10.2 · Windows · American English

Next, open Others and make one choice for the remainder of the photograph outside the detected faces:

For face-only retouching, leave the tools under Others off.
To retouch hands, arms, legs, or other body areas too, enable the tools you want under Others. Begin with restrained strengths because these settings can also affect clothing, hair, and the background.

Heal, Dodge Burn, and Portrait Volumes are disabled in the Others tab. — For face-only retouching, leave the tools in Others disabled. Keep them enabled when the rest of the photograph needs retouching. Arams 1.10.2 · Windows · American English

The Others tab has Heal 20, Dodge Burn 30, and Portrait Volumes 30 enabled. — Others controls retouching outside the detected faces, including body areas. These strengths are an example. Arams 1.10.2 · Windows · American English

The two screenshots illustrate the choice; they are not sequential steps. Keep the Others settings that suit your photographs. Do not turn off wanted retouching merely to reproduce the face-only example. All values shown are examples.

Copy the complete setup to the other portraits

When you have chosen the reference photograph’s starting settings, apply its complete image settings to photographs that need the same starting point.

In gallery view, right-click the reference photograph and choose Copy image settings.
Select the similar photographs that need the same starting point.
Right-click one of the selected photographs and choose Paste image settings.

Two photographs are selected in the gallery and Paste image settings is available in the context menu. — Paste the reference photograph’s complete image settings onto the selected photographs. Arams 1.10.2 · Windows · American English

After pasting, each selected photograph uses the reference photograph’s complete image setup.

The Female tab on another photograph shows copied values: Heal 55, Dodge Burn 60, and Portrait Volumes 55. — One selected photograph shows the copied tools and strengths; the complete image setup was pasted to every selected photograph. Arams 1.10.2 · Windows · American English

The screenshot above shows the copied settings on one photograph; you do not need to reopen every target. Copy image settings transfers the complete image setup, including the Male, Female, and Others settings, not only the currently visible category. Use a retouching preset instead when you want a named setup that you can reuse later.

Process and inspect the series

Select the photographs you want to process and open Export settings.
Choose the destination, file format, filename, and resize options needed for your job. Export to new copies so that your source photographs remain available for comparison.
Keep the wanted Male, Female, and Others tools enabled. You do not need to turn off any of them or run Retouch preview before exporting.
Choose Export and wait for processing to complete.

All Folders shows three original portraits and three JPEG copies with the -retouched suffix. — The processed copies appear alongside the originals, ready for comparison. Arams 1.10.2 · Windows · American English

The job is complete when the export finishes and the processed copies appear in the chosen destination. Spot-check a representative result and any photograph whose lighting, pose, framing, or visible body areas differ from the reference. Check faces and, when Others is enabled, the surrounding areas for retained detail, clean edges, and unwanted background changes.

The series should share the intended Male, Female, and Others setup while each photograph still looks appropriate on its own. Face counts can vary between photographs; correct a category only when a displayed classification is wrong.

Optional: make a per-photo exception

If one photograph needs a different treatment, adjust that photograph after reviewing the shared result, then process and inspect it again. This keeps the common setup consistent while allowing for differences in lighting, pose, framing, or visible body areas. See Retouch a consistent photo series for the per-photo workflow.

Optional: correct an incorrect face classification

Use this correction only when Arams places a face in the wrong Male or Female category.

With the photograph selected, use the face-outline icon in the narrow vertical toolbar at the far right to open Details and Faces.
Under Faces, hover the face you want to correct. In the floating card, find Gender.
Select the circular arrows next to Gender. This switches that face between Male and Female; it is separate from the Male and Female retouching tabs and does not require Analyze.
Read the new value in the face card, then return to Local in the retouching panel. Open By gender and continue with the corrected category.

A face card in Details and Faces showing Gender, the circular-arrow control, and the current Female value. — Hover a detected face and use the circular arrows beside Gender to correct its Male or Female classification. Arams 1.10.2 · Windows · American English

Optional shortcut: use All for one tool

Open All when you deliberately want to give one tool the same value in Male, Female, and Others. If Male and Female currently have different values, a blue marker shows the Male value and a pink marker shows the Female value on that tool’s slider.

Moving the slider replaces the three category values for that tool and enables it in all three categories, including Others. For example, moving Heal to 65 when it is 40 for Male, 55 for Female, and off at 0 for Others sets Heal to 65 and turns it on in all three. Other tools keep their existing category settings.

If it does not work

Faces stays at zero or reports that face search is disabled: return to Settings, enable Automatic face search, and wait for face search to finish.
Category tabs or counts are missing: select one photograph, confirm that face search completed, and reopen By gender.
A face appears in the wrong category: correct its Gender under Details and Faces, then reopen By gender and check the category counts.
A required tool is unavailable: check that its plugin is installed and activated for Local processing on this computer.
Settings were pasted onto the wrong photographs: select only the intended targets and repeat the copy-and-paste procedure for them. This does not restore the earlier settings on the photographs changed by mistake; review those photographs separately and use the per-photo workflow to adjust each one as needed.
The result varies too much across the series: keep the shared setup as a starting point, then make per-photo exceptions where the lighting, pose, or framing requires them.
Export does not complete: open processing history and review the displayed status or error before trying again.