Photo Guidelines

Calibre learns what you look like entirely from the selfies you upload. There is no database of your face to fall back on — the AI has only what you give it. If your selfies are dark, blurry, or obstructed, the model will have to guess, and the results will show it.

Good input selfies are the single biggest factor in the quality of your generated photos. Spending two minutes finding better shots before you upload will produce noticeably better results than any amount of re-generating with a weak character.

Aim for selfies that tick as many of these boxes as possible:

• Well-lit. Natural daylight is best — by a window or outside on an overcast day. Avoid harsh overhead lighting, deep shadows across your face, or yellow indoor tungsten light. Flat, even light makes it easiest for the model to read your features.
• Face clearly visible. Your eyes, nose, and mouth should all be in frame and unobstructed. No sunglasses, hats with brims pulled low, scarves covering the lower face, or hands in front of your face.
• A mix of expressions. Include a few neutral or relaxed expressions and a couple of natural smiles. Avoid extreme expressions — wide-open mouths, squinting hard — that distort your resting appearance.
• Variety of angles.Front-on, slight left, slight right. You don't need extreme side profiles, but a few degrees of variation helps the model build a fuller picture of your face.
• Recent. Use photos that look like you right now — same hair length, same facial hair, same rough weight. If your character is built on photos from three years ago, the results will look three years out of date.
• Decent resolution. Modern smartphone photos are fine. Avoid heavily compressed screenshots, tiny thumbnails, or photos that have been zoomed in so far that they are pixelated.

These types of photos consistently produce worse results. Leave them out:

• Heavy filters or face-altering effects. Snapchat beauty filters, FaceApp edits, and similar tools change your facial geometry. The model will learn the filtered version, not you.
• Sunglasses or anything covering your eyes. Your eyes are one of the most important features for identity consistency. Covering them forces the model to guess.
• Hats with brims pulled low or hoods up. Similar problem — they shadow or obscure the upper face.
• Group photos. Upload photos of only you. The model should have no ambiguity about who it is building a character for.
• Very dark or blurry shots. Night shots without good artificial lighting, motion blur, or out-of-focus faces all reduce accuracy.
• Extreme angles. Straight-down overhead shots, dramatic low-angle shots looking up, or near-profile shots where one eye is hidden add little value. Include them only if you also have plenty of good front-facing shots.
• Face too small in frame. If your face takes up less than roughly a third of the image height, the model has less to work with. Crop in if needed.

We recommend uploading 8–15 selfies when building your character. More is not always better — 30 identical front-facing shots in the same light add almost nothing. What helps is variety: different lighting conditions, slightly different angles, different expressions.

A diverse set of 8 good selfies will reliably outperform 25 similar ones taken in the same spot. Think of it as giving the model enough evidence to triangulate your face from multiple directions, rather than just reinforcing one angle.

If you update your character later (haircut, facial hair change), replace the old selfies with new ones that reflect your current look.

Calibre is designed to produce photos that look like natural, iPhone-quality shots — not obviously AI, not over-retouched, not studio-portrait stiff. The goal is something a date would believe you could plausibly have in your camera roll.

A few things worth knowing before you generate:

• Minor variation between generations is normal. Two photos generated from the same character in the same scene will not be identical. Lighting, expression, and framing shift slightly each time — that is intended, and mirrors how real photos vary.
• You choose how many photos per generation. Each generation costs one credit per photo — you can generate 1 to 5 photos in a single run. If you want variety, generate more in one go and pick your favourite.
• Results improve with better input. If early generations look off, revisit your character selfies before re-generating. Nine times out of ten, a poor result traces back to a weak selfie set.

AI generation is not perfect. Every now and then a result will have a subtle imperfection — an odd hand, a slightly off background detail, or lighting that doesn't quite match your face. These are known limitations of the technology.

Always review your photos before adding them to a dating profile. If a result doesn't look right, use the reroll feature to generate a replacement. You are not obligated to use every photo from a generation batch — take only the ones you are happy with.

If you are consistently getting poor results and improving your selfies does not help, contact us at support@caliber.photos and we will take a look.