Look & Sound Good: Camera Touch-Up, Auto-Light & Mic Cleanup in Zella

Animated webcam bubble with touch-up sparkle and clean-mic toggles

Quick answer: In Studio Settings → Camera (Look Good), toggle Touch up (smooths/evens your skin), Auto light (brightens a dim camera automatically), and Mirror. For your mic, enable Noise cancellation, Mic boost, and Echo removal so you sound clean at capture time — before you even reach the editor. These are quick on/off pills you set once.

On this page: what these do · touch up · auto light · mirror · mic cleanup · capture vs editor · where & when · impact · FAQ

What do these enhancements do?

These are capture-time polish toggles — they improve how you look and sound while recording, so the footage starts good instead of needing rescue in the edit. You’ll find them in the recording Setup panel → Studio → Camera tab, in the Look Good (and sound) controls.

Toggle	Affects	What it does
Touch up	Camera	Smooths/evens skin for a flattering look
Auto light	Camera	Auto-brightens a dim webcam image
Mirror	Camera	Flips the camera to match how you see yourself
Noise cancellation	Mic	Removes steady background noise (fans, hum)
Mic boost	Mic	Raises a quiet microphone’s level
Echo removal	Mic	Reduces room echo/reverb

How to use Touch up

Turn Touch up on in Studio Settings → Camera. It applies a subtle skin-smoothing/evening pass to your camera so you look polished on screen without a ring light or makeup. Keep it tasteful — it’s a light beautify, not a heavy filter.

How to use Auto light

Enable Auto light to automatically brighten your camera when the room is dim. It lifts a dark webcam image so your face is clearly lit even in poor lighting. (Note: a webcam in a very dark room also drops its frame rate to expose — Auto light helps brightness, but adding real light is still best for smoothness.)

Mirror

Mirror flips the camera horizontally so it matches how you see yourself in a mirror. Turn it off when you’ll show text or a screen to the camera, or the text reads backwards.

How to clean up your microphone at capture

Under the same Look/Sound Good controls, enable the mic toggles:

Noise cancellation — strips steady background noise (AC, fan hum, street).
Mic boost — raises the level of a quiet mic so you’re audible.
Echo removal — tames room reverb so you don’t sound “far away.”

Set these before recording and your raw audio is already clean.

Capture-time vs editor polish

There are two layers of audio cleanup in Zella, and they complement each other:

Here (capture time): Noise cancellation, Mic boost, Echo removal — applied live as you record.
In the editor: Polish Voice — an offline pass that adds de-essing, compression, and loudness normalization to ~−14 LUFS, plus Auto-Duck for music.

Use the capture toggles for a clean source; use Polish Voice in the editor for the final broadcast-level finish.

Where and when to use these

Talking-head / camera-bubble recordings: Touch up + Auto light so you look good on any webcam.
Noisy rooms: Noise cancellation + Echo removal for clean narration.
Quiet mics / laptops: Mic boost so you’re audible.
Showing text to camera: turn Mirror off.

What impact these have

For content creators and video editors, capture-time polish means less to fix later and a better first impression:

You look produced on a cheap webcam — Touch up + Auto light raise perceived quality, which builds trust on camera.
Clean audio from the start — recording with noise cancellation/echo removal means your narration is usable immediately, and Polish Voice has a clean source to finish.
Fewer re-records — fixing lighting and noise at capture beats discovering an unusable take in the edit.

Animated waveform showing clean captured audio

Look & sound FAQ

How do I look better on my webcam in Zella? Turn on Touch up and Auto light in Studio Settings → Camera (Look Good).

How do I remove background noise from my microphone? Enable Noise cancellation (and Echo removal) in the same Look/Sound Good controls before recording.

My mic is too quiet — what do I do? Turn on Mic boost.

What’s the difference between this and Polish Voice? These run at capture time; Polish Voice is an offline editor pass (de-ess, compression, −14 LUFS). Use both for the best result.

Why does text look backwards on my camera? Mirror is on — turn it off when showing text to camera.

Pro tips & gotchas

These are capture-time toggles — they fix lighting and noise before the editor, so the take starts clean.
Stack Touch up + Auto light to look produced on a cheap webcam.
For noisy rooms, Noise cancellation + Echo removal; for quiet mics, Mic boost.
Use these and the editor’s Polish Voice — capture-clean source + offline finish is the best combo.