AI Dating PicsFive minutes, twelve photos. Six is enough.
Every frame we make is made with a few of your photos beside it, chosen to match the shot: turned the way it is turned, smiling if it smiles. So what matters is your face from a few angles, smiling and not, in focus, clearly you, and the same you in every one. None of these has to be a good photo. Selfies at arm’s length by a window will do it.
The shot listWhat we check, on our endWhat happens when a photo fails
Before you start
Selfies are fine. Arm’s length, by a window.
The best sets we have seen were front-camera selfies: a clear close-up of your face is exactly what we want. Hold it at arm’s length, eye level, facing the light. What does not work is a phone held close to your face — that stretches the nose and shrinks the ears, and the distortion ends up in your frames as if it were you.
The same you in every photo
One haircut, one beard, glasses on or off throughout, shot in one sitting if you can. Every frame is made from several of your photos at once; give it two beards and it has a coin to flip. If you have changed something recently, shoot the set now rather than mixing old photos in.
If you use the rear camera
Prop it at eye level about a metre away and use the timer, or hand it to someone. Either camera: portrait mode off — its fake blur leaves halos around your hair that get copied — and no zoom past 2×; move closer instead.
Send the originals
Keep them at full size. HEIC is fine, we convert it. Don’t route them through WhatsApp, iMessage or Instagram first — they compress hard enough to fail the check. AirDrop, Drive, or straight from your camera roll; the upload page has a QR code for shooting on your phone and uploading from it.
The shot list
Work down it in order. The first group decides how much the frames look like you — the turns, and the smiles turned too, are what the picker reaches for; the second gives us your clothes and your frame. Six that pass is a set; the whole list is better, and a rejected photo or two never costs you it.
Your face face and shoulders, at arm’s length or propped at eye level, facing a window
- Facing the camera, relaxed.
- Head turned toward your left shoulder, eyes on the camera, relaxed.
- Head turned toward your right shoulder, relaxed.
- Facing the camera, a real smile with teeth. Think of something funny; don’t say cheese.
- Quarter-turned to your left, smiling.
- Quarter-turned to your right, smiling.
- Outside in the shade, small smile.
- Indoors at night, one lamp on, neutral.
A bit more of you waist-up or full-length, a different outfit, to capture your frame
- Standing, looking at the camera.
- Looking off to the side, hands doing something — a coffee, a sleeve, a door.
- Someone else takes this one, if there is someone: mid-conversation, not posing.
Optional only if you want the frames it unlocks
- Shirtless, if you’d want shirtless frames. We only put in the photos what your photos show, so without one there are none.
What makes the difference
Five things, and not one of them is about how good you look in any single photo.
- Turn your head. One photo turned toward each shoulder, eyes still on the camera, relaxed — and one each way smiling. A set that only faces forward gives us one side of you, and every frame turned the other way is then a guess. This is the single thing that most changes how much the results look like you.
- Smile for real, more than once. At least one facing the camera with teeth (the check likes two), and the quarter-turned ones smiling too. We can only make a smile we have seen, from the angle we have seen it — give us none and every smiling frame borrows someone else’s teeth.
- Two or three kinds of light: a window, outdoor shade, one lamp at night. Different light shows a different face, and the frames come back in light you never had.
- Two or three outfits. Not for the clothes — you choose those in the quiz — but so we have seen your shoulders and neck in more than one collar.
- Keep your face bare, and shoot it as you are now — and the same throughout: one haircut, one beard, glasses on or off in every photo, everything under about two years old. The profile has to match the man who turns up for the first drink, and the live selfie the apps now ask for.
Don’t send
The first four are what our check rejects outright. The last four it cannot see, and they cost you the likeness anyway.
- Group shots, or anyone else in the frame, including someone standing behind you.
- Screenshots, photos of photos, and anything a chat app has already compressed.
- Blurry frames, dark frames, and photos where your face is a small blob in a landscape.
- Sunglasses, hats, hoods, a hand across your face. We catch these when they hide enough of you, which is most of the time.
- Mirror selfies with the phone in shot.
- Filters, beauty mode, skin smoothing, FaceApp, anything already retouched.
- Only your good side. Every frame turned the other way is then guessed rather than copied.
- Anything older than about two years, or with hair or a beard you no longer have.
What we check, on our end
Every photo is checked on our server the moment it lands — not in your browser, where it could be argued with. If the service that runs the check can’t answer, nothing is marked ready: we would rather stall than shoot from a set nobody looked at.
Every photo
- One person
- A second clearly visible face rejects the photo. Someone tiny in the background is ignored; someone standing next to you is not.
- Big enough to read
- Measured on the file you sent. Screenshots, and photos that have been through a chat app, usually fail here.
- Face big enough in frame
- Below that there is not enough face to work from. The same measurement names the shot: 28%+ is a headshot, 12%–28% is waist-up, anything smaller is full body.
- In focus
- We measure the face crop, not the whole photo, so a crisp background never rescues a soft face. Slightly soft passes with a note; properly blurry is rejected.
- Lit so we can see you
- Too dark, too bright, or the highlights blown to flat white on your face. Again measured on the face, not the room.
- Not a near-duplicate
- Burst frames, re-sent copies and two shots a second apart count once: we keep the sharpest and reject the rest. A burst from one moment is one photo to us, not a set.
- Clearly you, face uncovered
- Every photo is compared against the middle of your set. Sunglasses, a mask, a hand across your face, or a photo of someone else, all fail here.
- A file we can open
- The upload page rejects anything else before it leaves your phone.
The set as a whole
- Enough photos
- Under 6 accepted and you cannot continue. Over 30 we keep the sharpest 30 and mark the rest “not needed”, which is not a failure.
- The same face throughout
- The set is compared against itself. A photo that is not clearly the same person as the rest is rejected rather than averaged in.
- Head turned each way
- We read the head angle of every photo and say which side we have not seen. Advice, not a gate: it will not stop you continuing. It is the one thing that most changes how much the frames look like you.
- Expressions
- We read the expressions across your set and tell you what is thin — a smile with teeth, say. Also advice. It is the cheapest thing you can do to make the smiling frames look like you.
Some things only earn a note and the photo still counts: slightly soft focus, a head turned a long way to the side or tilted far up or down, a face very tight in the frame.
What we can’t check: how many outfits and light types you used, how old the photos are, and whether they have been filtered or retouched. Nothing stops you uploading a beauty-filtered photo. It just puts a face that isn’t yours into every frame, and the apps now compare a live selfie against your profile, so that is the one shortcut that can cost you the account.
What happens when a photo fails
Each photo comes back labelled
Accepted ones say which framing they counted as. Rejected ones carry the reason in one line — “More than one person”, “Blurry”, “Too dark”, “Duplicate of IMG_4021”, “Face hidden or not you”.
You replace only those
Delete the flagged ones, add replacements, and the check re-runs as they arrive. Under the count it also says what would help — a turn it hasn’t seen, a smile with teeth — and that is advice, not a gate.
Continue stays locked until the set passes
What gets shot from is exactly what passed.
None of this costs you anything
You pay after your set passes, never before. A set that never passes is never shot from and never charged for, and if you can’t get one through, we would rather tell you that than take the money.
Ready to shoot?
Start with the quiz — two minutes, and it decides what we shoot for you. Your upload page is on the other side of it, and $49 is due only once your set passes.
Start with your photos