One step dominates the entire process

The instructions for generating a portrait are short. Upload, wait, choose. What decides the result happens before any of that.

The source photographs

Different days, different clothes, different light.

The system learns what is constant about your face and separates it from what is circumstantial. If all fifteen images came from one afternoon in one shirt, the shirt is constant — so the shirt becomes part of you.

This single decision moves the outcome more than the choice of vendor does, and it appears on no product page because it is not a feature anyone can sell.

The second step people skip

Selection. Choosing from the batch is where most of the quality difference lands, and a poor selection ruins a good set of headshots. Budget an hour.

What no step fixes

Faces further from the average. Strong prescription glasses, tightly curled hair, darker skin tones and pronounced asymmetry break these systems consistently, and ten free minutes tells you whether yours is one of them.